Between the second and third Lok Sabha elections—1957 and 1962—Goa was liberated and the government took an ‘in-principle’ decision to create the state of Nagaland. As was the case in Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the representatives for Nagaland were not elected but nominated.
In 1963, the North-East Frontier Agency, or NEFA, was represented by Daying Ering, whose report on participatory democracy two years later laid the groundwork for the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts. The third Lok Sabha also had 14 nominated members, including seven from Rajya Sabha who were appointed to jointly work with the Committee on Public Accounts of the House.
India’s second and longest-serving Chief Election Commissioner, KVK Sundaram, took over from his predecessor Sukumar Sen in December 1958 and held the post during the third and fourth Lok Sabha elections. He came from the Indian Civil Services and was well known for his juristic bent of mind. He had served as the Secretary to the first Law Commission and went on to head the fifth Law Commission after his tenure as the ECI ended in September 1967.
Incidentally, this was also the decade that marked the end of ‘Congress Consensus’, as well as the ‘One Nation One Vote’ system. This was because the tenures of state assemblies now varied from those at Lok Sabha.
Third Lok Sabha election
The third general elections were held between 19 and 25 February 1962, a few months before the border debacle with the Chinese. The Congress was able to retain power without a major contest, even though its vote share came down marginally. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru won another landslide victory for his third and final term, receiving 44.7 per cent of the vote and grabbing 361 of the 494 elected seats. This was only slightly lower than the tally in the previous two elections. But the Communist Party of India (CPI) gained in vote share, occupying 29 seats; the Bharatiya Jana Sangh also touched a double figure, with 14 members in the Lok Sabha.
The States Reorganisation Commission had rejected the demand for Haryana in 1956. But a new political formation, the Haryana Lok Samiti, put up a candidate named Jagdev Singh in the Jhajjar constituency, who wrested the seat in 1962 election from Congress. The number of Independents came down from 42 in the second Lok Sabha (with a vote share of 19.32 per cent) to 20 in the third Lok Sabha (with a vote share of 11.05 per cent).
Given the splits in the Congress, Socialists and the Communist parties, the number of Independents again went up to 35 in the 1967 election. But after that, the share of Independents in the popular vote has always been less than 10 per cent. The decline is so pronounced that in its 255th report, the Law Commission of India recommended barring Independent candidates from contesting Lok Sabha elections. It stated that such candidates were either not serious about elections or contested just to confuse the voters. The outgoing 17th Lok Sabha has only five Independent candidates.
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Fourth Lok Sabha election
The fourth general elections were held between 17 and 21 February 1967 to elect 520 of the 523 Lok Sabha members—15 more than the previous Lok Sabha. This was also the year when elections were conducted for the first time in Jammu and Kashmir, and the Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar islands. Frank Anthony and AET Barrow were again nominated in the Anglo-Indian category, while NEFA, too, continued to have a nominated member.
The incumbent Congress government retained power, though with a significantly reduced majority. The pro-Right-wing Swatantra Party and Bharatiya Jana Sangh got 44 and 35 seats, respectively, while the CPI and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) got 23 and 19 seats, respectively. The Socialists got 23 seats, thereby raising the strength of the Left-aligned parties to 65. However, as the Left and the Right wings were poles apart ideologically, there was no real threat to the Centrist Congress, which adopted populist measures such as the abolition of privy purses (for the erstwhile Rulers of princely states) and nationalisation of banks. With the slogan of ‘Garibi Hatao’, Indira Gandhi decided to seek a fresh mandate even before the Lok Sabha completed its stipulated term of five years.
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Fifth Lok Sabha election
Civil servant SP Sen Verma, who was India’s Chief Election Commissioner from October 1967 to September 1972, was responsible for conducting the fifth Lok Sabha polls between 1 and 10 March 1971. Indira Gandhi emerged as an undisputed leader, grabbing 43.68 per cent of the 55.27 per cent votes polled along with 352 seats. The old guard of the Congress and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh performed poorly, but the two Communist parties and their allies—the All India Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party – together made a Left bloc of 53 members.
In an incisive analysis of the 1971 election, American political scientist Myron Weiner wrote that this was the first election fought on national issues, and the mode of campaign adopted by Indira Gandhi was ‘presidential’. She appealed to voters to ratify her decisions concerning bank nationalisation and the abolition of privy purses. Votes were being cast for her instead of the local MP. Meanwhile, the old guard of the Congress was stuck to its old ways – fighting elections based on the patronage politics of the MLAs and MPs, which was not the flavour of the day.
The second major change during this period was the growing significance of regional parties. In eight of the 18 large states, the regional party – from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu to the Akali Dal in Punjab – received the highest or the second highest votes. This ensured that regional concerns were prioritised in national politics. Additionally, Indira took the far-reaching decision of freezing the parliamentary constituencies based on the 1971 census for 25 years until 2001. This decision was implemented during the Emergency period through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment.
The boundaries of constituencies were altered in 2001 to balance populations among parliamentary and assembly seats. However, state-wise Lok Sabha seats and the seats in legislative assemblies have remained unaltered since the 1971 Census. A change, perhaps, can only be observed after 2026, as the 84th Amendment to the Constitution in 2002 extended the freeze on seats until the first Census after 2026.
In 1975, a judgment of the Allahabad High Court disqualified Indira from her constituency due to electoral malpractice – a decision that eventually led to the imposition of the Emergency. Moreover, the five-year Lok Sabha term was extended two times by one year at a time – an unprecedented and highly questionable move. However, Indira announced elections before the completion of the second one-year extension, and the Congress was trounced for the first time in the history of the Republic.
It may be mentioned that this was also the period that saw the famous jurist Nagendra Singh as the Election Commissioner for a brief period – from 1 October 1972 to 6 February 1973. He did not get the opportunity to conduct any election.
Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Until recently, he was Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)