Subnational Electoral Coercion in India (SECI) Data set, 1985-2015

The Subnational Electoral Coercion in India (SECI) Data Set provides comprehensive data on electoral coercion in 186 Indian Vidhan Sabha (state legislative assembly) elections between 1985 and 2015. SECI draws on news reports to capture instances of electoral coercion, including coercive fraud, election boycotts by non-state armed groups, and deaths resulting from electoral violence at the assembly constituency level. SECI differs from existing data in its focus on subnational elections, its temporal coverage and its broad definition of electoral coercion, thus opening up new directions for research on electoral politics across Indian states.