The First Loksabha (1952-57):
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It was the first ever election in the Indian Republic. Elections were held for 489 seats.The total number of eligible voters were about 17.3 crore. The Indian National Congress (INC) won 364. Only two other parties won double digit seats.The CPI with 16 seats and the Socialist Party with 12 seats. The Congress polled closed to 45% of the total vote. The Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), the previous avatar of the BJP won only 3 seats. Independents won the second highest number of seats after Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru was elected the Prime Minister.
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The Second Loksabha (1957-62):
Out of 494 seats, the Indian National Congress (INC) won 371. Only two other parties won double digit seats.The CPI with 27 seats and the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) with 19 seats. The Congress polled closed to 48% of the total vote. The BJS won only 4 seats. Once again, the Independents won the second highest number of seats after Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru was again elected the Prime Minister. There was no official Leader of Opposition during the second Loksabha (LoP).
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The Third Loksabha (1962-67):
Out of 494 seats, the Indian National Congress (INC) won 361. In these elections, four other parties won double digit seats (CPI, Jan Sangh, Swatantra Party & PSP). The Congress vote share was reduced to about 45% from 48% in the previous election. Jawaharlal Nehru was elected the Prime Minister.
But after he passed away in 1964, Gulzari lal Nanda was made the interim PM who was succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri who held the post for about 19 months before his death.
Indira Gandhi then took over in 1966.
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The Fourth Loksabha (1967-70):
The size of electorate in this election was about 25 crore. The Congress party under Indira Gandhi’s leadership won a 4th successive term to office by winning 283 out of 520 seats. But the vote share of Congress went down to about 41%. In these elections, six other parties won double digit seats with C Rajagopala Chari’s Swatantra Party winning 44 seats and emerging as the single largest opposition party. Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister for the second time
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1967 Indian general election
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Indian general election of 1967 elected the 4th Lok Sabha of India and was held from 17 to 21 February. The 27 Indian states and union The incumbent Indian National Congress (INC) government retained power, albeit with a significantly reduced majority. Indira Gandhi was resworn in as the Prime Minister on 4 March 1967.
Background[edit]
By 1967, economic growth in India had slowed – the 1961–1966 Five-Year Plan gave a target of 5.6% annual growth, but the actual growth rate was 2.4%. Under Lal Bahadur Shastri, the government's popularity was boosted after India prevailed in the 1965 War with Pakistan, but the war, along with the previous 1962 War with China, put a strain on the economy. Internal divisions were emerging in the Indian National Congress while its two popular leaders Nehru and Shastri had both died. Indira Gandhi had succeeded Shastri as leader, but a rift had emerged between her and Deputy Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who had been her rival in the 1966 party leadership contest.[2]
Results[edit]
The INC suffered setbacks in seven states, which included Gujarat, where INC won 11 out of 24 seats while Swatantra Party won 12 seats; Madras, where INC won 3 out of 39 seats and DMK won 25 seats; Orissa, where they won 6 out of 20 seats and Swatantra Party won 8 seats. Rajasthan where they won 10 out of 20 seats Swatantra Party won 8 seats, West Bengal where they won 14 out of 40, Kerala where they won only 1 out of 19. Delhi where they won 1 out of 7 while remaining 6 were won by Bharatiya Jana Sangh.[1] The party was also ousted from power in nine states, while losing governance in Uttar Pradesh one month after the election.[3]
Indian National Congress
INC
40.78
283
==============.
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The Fifth Loksabha (1971-77):
This was the first election after Indira Gandhi broke away from the Congress. Her party won a whopping 352 seats out of 518 with the other faction of Congress under Morarji Desai winning only 16 seats. Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister for the third time. It was during this time in 1975, that the emergency was imposed in the country that had a huge impact on the politics of India thereafter.
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The Sixth Loksabha (1977-79):
These were the first elections after the emergency. Bharatiya Lok Dal (or the Janata party) emerged victorius in these elections defeating the congress for the first time.The BLD was formed at the end of 1974 through the fusion of seven parties opposed to the autocratic rule of Indira Gandhi, including the Swatantra Party, the Utkal Congress, the Bharatiya Kranti Dal, and the Socialist Party. In 1977, the BLD combined with the Jan Sangh and the Indian National Congress (Organization) to form the Janata Party. The newly formed Janata Party contested the 1977 elections on the BLD symbol and formed independent India’s first government not ruled by the Indian National Congress. The BLD won 295 of the 542 seats while congress could win only 154. Morarji Desai became the Prime Minister, but had to step down in 1979 after couple of parties in the Janata alliance pulled out. He was succeeded by Charan Singh.
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The Seventh Loksabha (1980-84):
After the failure of the Janata experiment, Congress(I) under the leadership of Indira Gandhi bounced back to power winning a handsome 353 of the 529 seats on offer. The parties of the earlier Janata coalition could not repeat their performance in the previous election. There was no Leader of Opposition (LoP).
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The Eighth Loksabha (1984-89):
After Indira Gandhi was assasinated,the anti-Sikh riots broke out in 1984. They were a series of pogroms directed against Sikhs in India, by anti-Sikh mobs, in response to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Riding on the wave of sympathy, the Congress party under Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership (son of Indira Gandhi) came to power in a landslide victory.The Congress won 404 of the 514 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made its electoral debut winning 2 seats, one in Gujarat and another in Andhra Pradesh (Now Telangana). Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister
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1989 Indian general election
General elections were held in India in 1989 to elect the members of the 9th Lok Sabha.[2] The incumbent Indian National Congress (I) government under the premiership of Rajiv Gandhi was defeated by the National Front, an alliance forged by Janata Dal, which won a plurality of seats. The alliance formed the government with outside support from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).[3][4] V. P. Singh was sworn in as the seventh Prime Minister of India on 2 December 1989.
The 1989 Indian general election were held because the previous Lok Sabha has been in power for a five years, and the constitution allowed for new elections. Even though Rajiv Gandhi had won the last election by a landslide, this election saw him trying to fight off scandals that had marred his administration.
The Bofors scandal, rising militancy in Punjab, the civil war between LTTE and Sri Lankan government were just some of the problems that stared at Rajiv's government. Rajiv's biggest critic was Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who had held the portfolios of the finance ministry and the defence ministry in the government.
But Singh was soon sacked from the Cabinet and he then resigned from his memberships in the Congress and the Lok Sabha. He formed the Jan Morcha with Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammad Khan and re-entered the Lok Sabha from Allahabad. Witnessing V P Singh's meteoric rise on national stage, Rajiv tried to counter[5] him with another prominent Rajput stalwart Satyendra Narain Singh but failed eventually.
V. P. Singh, who was the head of the Janata Dal, was chosen leader of the National Front government.[7] His government fell after Singh, along with Bihar's Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav's government, had Advani arrested in Samastipur and stopped his Ram Rath Yatra, which was going to the Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya on 23 October 1990. Bharatiya Janata Party withdrew their support to Singh government, causing them to lose parliamentary vote of confidence on 7 November 1990.[8]
Chandra Sekhar as Prime Minister[edit]
Chandra Shekhar broke away from the Janata Dal with 64 MPs and formed the Samajwadi Janata Party in 1990. He got outside support from the Congress and became the 9th Prime Minister of India. He finally resigned on 21 June 1991, after the Congress alleged that the government was spying on Rajiv Gandhi.
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The Ninth Loksabha (1989-91):
The Bofors scandal,LTTE and other issues worked against the Congress. There was a hung house for the first time with no party getting a majority. The Congress won 197, The Janata Dal 143 and the BJP 85 out of 529 seats. The BJP made impressive gains. The Janata Dal formed the National Front government with outside support from BJP and the left parties. Vishwanath Pratap Singh (VP Singh) became the Prime Minister. His rival in the Janata Dal, Chandra Shekhar broke away in 1990 and formed the Samajwadi Janata Party. As a result, VP Singh had to step down. Chandra Shekhar then became the Prime Minister in 1990 with the external support of Congress. Even this experiment lasted only for a shortwhile forcing general elections in just 2 years.
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The Tenth Loksabha (1991-96):
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in the run upto the 1991 general elections by the LTTE. These elections were also termed as the ‘Mandal-Mandir’ elections after the two most important poll issues; the Mandal Commission fallout and the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid issue.While the Mandal Commission report implemented by the VP Singh government gave 27 per cent reservation to the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in government jobs, the Mandir issue referred to the debate over the disputed Babri Masjid structure at Ayodhya, which the Bharatiya Janata Party was using as its major electoral issue.The Mandir issue led to numerous riots in many parts of the country and the electorate was polarized on caste and religious lines. No party could get a majority. Congress emerged as the single largest party with 232 seats while the BJP won 120 seats out of 521 seats. P V Narasimha Rao headed a minority government and was the first person from South India to occupy the Prime Minister’s chair. He is credited with ushering in economic reforms and also identifying Manmohan Singh who went onto become the Prime Minister.
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1971
INDIRA GANDHI
----------
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Turnout
55.27%
General elections were held in India to constitute the
5th Lok Sabha on March 1971.
This was the fifth election since independence in 1947. The 27 Indian states and union territories were represented by 518 constituencies, each with a single seat.[2] Under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, the Indian National Congress (R) led a campaign which focused on reducing poverty and won a landslide victory, overcoming a split in the party and regaining many of the seats lost in the previous election.[3]
During her previous term, there had been internal divisions in the Indian National Congress between Indira Gandhi and the party establishment, especially Morarji Desai.
In 1969, she was expelled from the party, causing a split. Most of the Congress MPs and grassroots support joined Gandhi's INC(R) faction, which was recognised by the Election Commission as being the successor to the previous party. 31 MPs who opposed Gandhi formed Indian National Congress (Organization) party.
Opposition alliance[edit]
INC(O) formed a pre-poll alliance with Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP), Praja Socialist Party (PSP), Swatantra Party and Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) to defeat Gandhi's party.
Despite the split, the Ruling faction gained votes and seats to win a strong majority, while the Grand Alliance was badly trounced and lost more than half of their seats.
On 12 June 1975, the Allahabad High Court invalidated the result in Gandhi's constituency on the grounds of electoral malpractices. Instead of resigning, Indira Gandhi called a state of emergency, suspending democracy and outlawed political opposition. After democracy was restored in 1977, the opposition Congress faction formed a coalition of parties called the Janata Party, which inflicted the Congress' first electoral defeat.
=======================
1989 Indian general election
General elections were held in India in 1989 to elect the members of the 9th Lok Sabha.[2] The incumbent Indian National Congress (I) government under the premiership of Rajiv Gandhi was defeated by the National Front, an alliance forged by Janata Dal, which won a plurality of seats. The alliance formed the government with outside support from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).[3][4] V. P. Singh was sworn in as the seventh Prime Minister of India on 2 December 1989.
The 1989 Indian general election were held because the previous Lok Sabha has been in power for a five years, and the constitution allowed for new elections. Even though Rajiv Gandhi had won the last election by a landslide, this election saw him trying to fight off scandals that had marred his administration.
The Bofors scandal, rising militancy in Punjab, the civil war between LTTE and Sri Lankan government were just some of the problems that stared at Rajiv's government. Rajiv's biggest critic was Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who had held the portfolios of the finance ministry and the defence ministry in the government.
But Singh was soon sacked from the Cabinet and he then resigned from his memberships in the Congress and the Lok Sabha. He formed the Jan Morcha with Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammad Khan and re-entered the Lok Sabha from Allahabad. Witnessing V P Singh's meteoric rise on national stage, Rajiv tried to counter[5] him with another prominent Rajput stalwart Satyendra Narain Singh but failed eventually.
V. P. Singh, who was the head of the Janata Dal, was chosen leader of the National Front government.[7] His government fell after Singh, along with Bihar's Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav's government, had Advani arrested in Samastipur and stopped his Ram Rath Yatra, which was going to the Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya on 23 October 1990. Bharatiya Janata Party withdrew their support to Singh government, causing them to lose parliamentary vote of confidence on 7 November 1990.[8]
Chandra Sekhar as Prime Minister[edit]
Chandra Shekhar broke away from the Janata Dal with 64 MPs and formed the Samajwadi Janata Party in 1990. He got outside support from the Congress and became the 9th Prime Minister of India. He finally resigned on 21 June 1991, after the Congress alleged that the government was spying on Rajiv Gandhi.
1996
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1996 Indian general election
General elections were held in India in 1996 to elect the members of the 11th Lok Sabha.
The election produced a hung parliament with no single party having a clear majority. Bharatiya Janata Party, the largest party, formed a short lived government under the premiership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. United Front secured majority support resulting in H. D. Deve Gowda of Janata Dal succeeding Vajpayee and being the 11th Prime Minister of India, before eventually being replaced by I. K. Gujral, another United Front leader. Despite that, the country went back to the polls in 1998.
The Indian National Congress government of Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao came into the election on the back of several government scandals and accusations of mishandling. Seven cabinet members had resigned during the previous term, and Rao himself faced charges of corruption. The Congress Party more generally had been plagued in recent years by a series of splits, issues conflicts and factional disputes that had seen various key regional parties and figures abandon the party. In particular, the high-profile May 1995 defection of Arjun Singh and Narayan Datt Tiwari to form the new All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) party underscored the internal divisions within the INC.
The government was further weakened by a series of major scandals breaking less than 12 months from the election. In July 1995 it was found a former Congress youth leader had murdered his wife and tried to destroy the evidence by stuffing her corpse into a tandoor. In August 1995 the Vohra Report was finally released to the parliament, decrying that a politician-criminal nexus was "virtually running a parallel government, pushing the state apparatus into irrelevance".[2] Government credibility fell further still when in late 1995 when violence significantly worsened in the Kashmir region, and sporadic fighting and ethnic tensions boiled over in Punjab province. As a result of the scandals, the Rao government went into the 1996 election at a low of ebb of public support.
Campaign
The elections triggered a significant realignment of political forces in Indians, with all-India parties attempting to construct widespread regional coalitions with minor parties in order to secure a central majority. Such political negotiations were to become an increasingly necessary process in Indian politics over the next two decades as the dominance of the INC declined and smaller, ethnic and regional parties took its place.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Lal Krishna Advani attempted to add several regional coalition partners - most notably the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Bahujan Samaj Party, but was ultimately unsuccessful in overcoming ideological differences.
Yet it did join with several strong regional partners - Shiv Sena, Haryana Vikas Party, and the Samata Party. The Congress party attempted to form regional allies as well, most notably with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).[4][5]
The so-called "Third Force" during the 1996 elections was the National Front (NF). After its collapse in 1990, the coalition had chopped and changed before reuniting in the run up to the 1996 election. Three main parties grouped back together in September 1995 in hopes of presenting a viable political choice -
the Left Front, Janata Dal and the Telugu Desam Party. It attempted to build a wider coalition of regional partners and state parties, however negotiations repeatedly broke down, and no consensus could be arrived at on a 'common minimum program' - a platform of issues on which all parties could agree upon. A split in the Uttar Pradesh government in December 1995 divided the front further. Finally, lacking a strong leader or common set of principles, the main three parties joined with the Samajwadi Party in a common goal of simply denying power to either the Congress or BJP. Thus a characteristic of the 1996 elections was a large number of strong regional and state parties declined to form an alliance with any of the three major contenders for government.[6]
In January only a few months before the election, a major scandal erupted: the Jain hawala scandal. Jain, an industrialist in the steel and power sectors, was revealed to have given US$33 million in bribes to politicians from nearly all major parties in return for favours. Further shocking the public, Jain had also channelled money to Kashmiri Muslim militants. In the first wave of names implicated were three Rao cabinet members, Arjun Singh from the breakaway Congress (T) party, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani, Sharad Yadav (leader of the Janata Dal Parliamentary Party), and former Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Almost 115 names would eventually be released, and numerous candidates and ministers were forced to resign in the aftermath.
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Most significantly was the forced resignation of L.K. Advani, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee taking over as leader of the BJP.
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The BJP ran a campaign centred around a four-point plan which aimed for probity of public life, self-reliance in the economy, social harmony and greater security. It strongly advocated an economic plan which would significantly scale back government intervention and encourage capital investment and creation. It stressed the role of Hindutva in its vision for India, creating a more Hindu orientated state by banning cow slaughter, introducing a uniform civil code and removing the special status of Kashmir.
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The Congress Party attempted to campaign on its foreign policy record, its handling of the numerous natural and ethnic crises that had emerged over the past five years, and on better concessions for ethnic minorities and separated state governments. It additionally stressed the economic gains already made by the government due to its Liberalization policies post 1992. Janata Dal and the National Front campaigned on maintaining a strong public sector though with some commitment to deregulation and anti-corruption measures. It pushed other more populist measures as well, such as more state-run infrastructure projects, subsidised fertilizer, and increased education investment.[8]
Results
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The election delivered an unclear mandate and resulted in a hung parliament. The result was the worst result for the INC in history to that date, with commentators blaming the poor result on the personal unpopularity of Prime Minister Rao and the numerous internal divisions that had dogged the party. Congress was almost wiped out in its traditional strongholds of Uttar Pradesh & Bihar with many stalwarts like Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, Jagannath Mishra, Satyendra Narain Sinha suffered electoral setbacks.The BJP became the largest party within the Lok Sabha, a first for a non-Congress party, although it secured neither a significant increase in the popular vote or enough seats to secure a parliamentary majority.
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Following Westminster custom, Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma invited Atal Bihari Vajpayee as leader of the BJP to form a government. Sworn in on 15 May, the new Prime Minister was given two weeks to prove majority support in parliament. In the weeks leading up to the first confidence vote on 31 May, the BJP attempted to build a coalition by moderating positions to garner support from regional and Muslim parties, however sectarian issues and fears of certain nationalist policies of the BJP hampered efforts. On 28 May, Vajpayee conceded that he could not arrange support from more than 200 of the 545 members of parliament, and thus resigned rather than face the confidence vote, ending his 13-day government.[11]
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The second largest party, the Indian National Congress, declined to attempt to form a government, instead choosing to support one headed by Janata Dal, and chose Karnataka Chief Minister H. D. Deve Gowda to assume the Prime Minister post. Janata Dal and a bloc of smaller parties thus formed the United Front,[10] with outside support from INC. Gowda resigned on 21 April 1997 to pave way for I. K. Gujral, who maintained good relations with INC.
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However the Fodder Scam resulted in many United Front members demanding the resignation of Lalu Prasad Yadav, an alliance partner and the then Chief Minister of Bihar. Yadav retaliated by breaking away from Janata Dal and forming Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on 3 July 1997. Out of 45 Janata Dal members of parliament, 17 left the party and supported Yadav. However, the new party continued in the United Front and Gujral's government was saved from immediate danger. Gujral resigned 11 months later when INC withdrew support to the government, and the country went back to the polls in 1998.
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The Fifteenth Loksabha (2009-14):
The Congress led UPA implemented a lot of its promises including the enactment of Right to Information (RTI) & the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). It also waived off farm loans in 2008. Against this background, it went into the polls in 2009. The NDA on the other hand was led by L K Advani. The Congress won 206 seats, a huge improvement from 2004. The BJP could win only 116. The regional parties won 146 seats. The UPA came to power for the second term in a row. Dr. Manmohan Singh was sworn in as the Prime Minister for the second time.
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The Sixteenth Loksabha (2014-19):
The second term of the UPA proved to be a disaster with numerous allegations of corruption & scams. 2G, Coal Block, Adarsh, Commonwealth Games to name a few. The silence of the Prime Minister and the perception that he had no real power made matters worse. The BJP was successfully able to project Narendra Modi as the man of the hour and also as its Prime Ministerial candidate. Rahul Gandhi could not match Narendra Modi. The BJP won majority on its own with 282 seats while the Congress recorded its worst ever performance with just 44 seats. This was the first time since 1984 that a party won a majority on its own.
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The Seventeenth Loksabha (2014-19):
Riding the wave of Nationalism, popular schemes and the lack of an alternative leader who can match Narendra Modi, the BJP romped home with an increased mandate. Narendra Modi led BJP won 303 seats on its own and crossed the 350 mark with its NDA allies. Narendra Modi became only the 3rd person in India’s history to have secured a single party majority two times in a row, after Jawaharlal Nehru & Indira Gandhi. The Congress received a drubbing again winning only 52 seats. Congress President Rahul Gandhi even lost the election from Amethi.
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