India’s Electoral System is Melting Under Extreme Heat
- Priyanka Thirumurthy & Nigazh A.I
- 2 minutes ago
- 6 min read
This article is a collaboration between The Xylom and Dialogue Earth. Subscribe to their newsletter here.
On 13 February, 37-year-old Suraj stood for nearly four hours in open ground in Salem, Tamil Nadu, waiting to hear a campaign speech by an actor-turned-politician. In the early afternoon, the heat had intensified. Minutes into the speech, Suraj collapsed, clutching his chest. Less than an hour later, he was declared dead.
In the hours before his collapse, Suraj had been exposed to a Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) above 38 C, according to a study by Poovulagin Nanbargal (Friends of the Earth), an environmental organisation based in Tamil Nadu.
UTCI calculates a “feels like” temperature that takes into account not just ambient air temperature but also humidity, wind, and sunlight. Values above 32 C indicate strong heat stress, and above 38 C indicate extreme stress, where even minimal activity can be dangerous. When core body temperature exceeds 39 C, it can lead to dehydration, organ failure, and death.
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Suraj’s passing reflects a largely unacknowledged reality. India’s elections are increasingly unfolding in dangerously hot conditions; conditions which are not treated as a public health risk even while they are claiming lives.
Heatwaves are only likely to get worse with climate change, bringing more health impacts and risks to public health, water resources, and vulnerable populations.
A Big Month for Voting
This month, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam, West Bengal, and Puducherry all host regional elections, between April 9 and 29.
In the days leading up to the elections, temperatures surged across Kerala with the mercury reaching 38 C. The India Meteorological Department has issued heatwave warnings on several dates in April when voting was occurring, with yellow alerts in 12 out of Kerala’s 14 districts.
On the ground, such warnings have reshaped campaigns. Across states, parties adjusted schedules, doctors prepared for a surge in heat-related illness, and workers described mounting difficulty operating outdoors.
In Kozhikode district, campaigning has shifted to early mornings and evenings.
“People start getting rashes and fatigue if we’re outside after 11.30 am,” says Jayesh M, a worker with the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Even with shifted rallies, heat-related illnesses still spike during these gatherings.
“We see giddiness, breathlessness, and dehydration every time there is a large gathering,” says Kalpana Mahanta, a doctor in Guwahati, Assam.
This echoes the 2024 general election, which coincided with one of India’s most intense heatwaves. Tens of thousands of suspected heatstroke cases were reported, along with hundreds of deaths. Estimates range from 360 to over 700.
Candidates themselves struggled. “Despite hydrating constantly, I found it hard to cope,” recalls Singhai Ramachandran, who contested in 2024 for the opposition party AIADMK. He remembers candidates fainting, severe sunburns, and hospitalisations due to dehydration.
“We hold rallies in the evening now,” says A. Saravanan, a spokesperson for the ruling DMK party. “But crowds are smaller and consist mostly of dedicated party cadres. The general public avoids the heat.”
Aditi Kundu of SwitchON Foundation, which works on sustainability and climate issues, also says voters are increasingly reluctant to attend political events in the heat.
“For the last few elections, parties are giving coconut water at rallies to supporters. We have seen them even giving hats and umbrellas to prevent sunstroke. But this alone may not be enough to counter the impact of high … temperatures”.
Her research in West Bengal shows heat is no longer an occasional disruption but a persistent crisis, with 61.7% of respondents saying they knew someone who had died due to heatwaves.
Yet some political leaders are dismissive of suggestions that this impacts elections. “People here are used to the heat,” says Trinamool Congress vice president Jayaprakash Majumdar from West Bengal. “Turnout depends on political conditions, not climate.”
Some experts argue this perception reflects a deeper issue: the impact of heat on health in India is often unseen and unrecorded, and therefore unacknowledged. Suraj’s death in February, before peak summer, fits this pattern: it was officially attributed to a heart attack, obscuring the likely role of heat.
“What you cannot count, you cannot act on,” says Apekshita Varshney, founder of HeatWatch. “When official numbers say only a few dozen people died from heat in a season, policymakers can justify inaction.”
The real number may be orders of magnitude higher, she says.
Some deaths are recorded as heat-related, however.
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The Xylom and Dialogue Earth analysed 20 suspected heat deaths recorded in the summers of 2024 and 2025 by NGO HeatWatch via media reports from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam, and West Bengal. The mortalities occurred in the months of February to July, when campaigning and voting usually take place in Indian elections.
Of them, 17 occurred when UTCI exceeded 38 C. The remaining three occurred above 32 C and involved highly vulnerable elderly individuals or intense physical exertion.
Even where these dangerous heat conditions existed, there was often no heatwave declared: alerts were issued in only five of the 13 locations where deaths occurred.
In 2024, most deaths occurred in April and May. In 2025, many events occurred as late as July, particularly in Assam, where humidity drives prolonged heat stress. Across states, UTCI levels remained above dangerous thresholds for much of the February-July election cycle.
Lack of Guidance
Hosting outdoor elections without heat warning systems and cooling measures is a major risk to health. But official monitoring and guidance are lacking.
An Election Commission official confirmed to The Xylom and Dialogue Earth that the body maintains no official data on heat-related illnesses or deaths among voters, polling staff, and security personnel during elections.
Media reports in 2024 stated that the commission had set up a task force to evaluate how heat impacts elections, but the official said that, to the best of his knowledge, this work had not been conducted.
“We do not oversee campaigns and political rallies. We leave it to the state’s chief election officers to issue advisories that are required according to the local requirements,” they say.
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Archana Patnaik is the chief election commissioner of Tamil Nadu. She says there is a checklist that must be followed for campaigns in the heat.
“Public meeting venues should have shade, shelter, water, and medical aid for the benefit and convenience of the public. Basically, if any advisory is issued on heatwaves, then dos and don’ts [are] to be followed by all,” she says.
Some experts want more.
“The Election Commission by now should have given advisories to parties that they cannot hold rallies in the afternoon heat. They are yet to do this,” says G Sundarrajan, a member of the Tamil Nadu Governing Council on Climate Change.
Heat and health experts say there are relatively easy-to-implement solutions: shifting rally times; pre-event heat risk assessments; mandatory cooling zones; medical staff; caps on crowd density; and thresholds above which outdoor political events are simply not be permitted. But advisories alone are insufficient, many believe, and there needs to be strict monitoring of campaigns to ensure they comply.
India frequently struggles with preparedness for the impact of heat on large crowds. The deaths at the Marina Beach air show in Tamil Nadu in 2024 and at a government award ceremony in Maharashtra in 2023 demonstrate this.
“Advisories alone do not translate to action,” says Abhiyant Tiwari, climate resilience and health lead for NRDC India. “There needs to be a strict monitoring and implementation process in place,” he adds.
Moving Beyond Temperature
Globally, more advanced approaches already exist to monitor heat and assess impact on human health than are used in India, according to a 2021 book on the use of UTCI. Across Europe, UTCI is integrated into public health systems, helping authorities anticipate and respond to heat risks.
In Poland, a UTCI above 32 C is linked to a more than 25% increase in mortality risk, guiding public advisories and preparedness, states the book. In Portugal, high-resolution UTCI forecasts are shared with civil protection agencies. This enables targeted interventions, studies show, such as activating emergency plans to protect vulnerable populations.
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UTCI data also feeds into pan-European decision-support systems used by first responders to prepare for extreme weather events, the book adds. These systems help to shift responses from reactive to preventive by translating complex climate data into clear and actionable guidance.
In India, however, large-scale outdoor events like elections continue without integrating such tools into planning or risk assessment.
As temperatures rise, consequences become more visible. In the current elections, in which around one in five voters could go to the polls, the signs are that heat means some people in India will suffer for their political rights.
Some may end up forgoing them entirely.
In Part 2, we examine what happens on polling day itself: how heat shapes voter turnout, who is excluded from the democratic process as a result, and what it will take to make elections safer in a warming world.
