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.
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 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 is 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.
Archana Patnaik is 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 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 in 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 32C is linked to a more than 25 per cent increase in mortality risk, guiding public advisories and preparedness, the book states. 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.
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 outdoor election events 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.
This article is a collaboration between The Xylom and Dialogue Earth.
This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under a Creative Commons licence.
