It's been a long, exhausting six weeks for India, between the blazing heat of the sun and the shrill rhetoric of election season. And to top it all off, each Indian state has had to contend with between two and 10 dry days in April and May, all for the sake of democracy. But it's all finally over, and 23 May, i.e. the results day, is the final dry day of the election season.
Why is 23 May a dry day?
Excise rules state that the 48 hours before the end of polling in each constituency are declared “dry”, which means no alcohol served or sold (with legal exceptions, of course). Additional dry days included Labour Day/Maharashtra Day, Ram Navami/Ambedkar Jayanti and Mahavir Jayanti.
In addition, the day the results are tallied is also a dry day. 23 May, the day when the votes of hundreds of millions of Indians will be counted and our fate for the next five years declared, and it's a dry day across India. No alcohol can be served anywhere in the country—not even in gymkhanas—till the last vote has been counted, which may be as late as 10pm, or even later.
Naturally, emotions are bound to run high. And so whether the election results will have you celebrating or despondent, you may want to stock up on the good stuff tonight.