This version of prolonging the election process does not equate to "perpetuate the campaign" - although that may be the inevitable result. Instead it means prolonging the voting cycle. Rather than having a single national election day, India solves its problem of casting and counting votes by continuing the voting process over the course of several weeks.
Taking its cue from the wise advice that "all politics are local", India's Parliamentary elections are nothing more than an exaggerated series of local elections conducted at the state or regional level. Sometimes more than one state votes on the same day. This makes compiling the results much simpler, but it also makes fraud much easier.
The results of each election are announced as soon as they are compiled at the local level. That could have the effect of affecting the results in other states whose elections are held later in much the same way as announcing results in one time zone of a country risks affecting voter turnout in another time zone whose polls are not closed. For example, if the trend in the first states to vote indicate the Congress Party has a wide lead, Congress supporters in other later voting areas may decide they can spend their voting day in some way that seems more productive to them. If the first results indicate that parties other than Congress have a wide lead, the party has a better opportunity to rally its supporters at each level of voting.
Then the process becomes very interesting and perhaps uniquely Indian. After a month of elections and election results, what happens if no party has a clear lead? The party with a plurality of the votes has one of two options: (1) Form a coalition with a party whose support will assure the party with the dominant plurality a solid majority in the national Parliament; or (2) Send the election to another round.
Option (1) can produce awkward governing coalitions that are unable to sustain their majorities for any length of time. Parties may join or leave these coalitions for purely needs of convenience. This sometimes means a succession of several prime ministers - perhaps all from different parties - without a new electioon. This in particular was the case in India during the mid-1990s when the "Third Way" bloc was at the height of its influence.
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