Free Sample Essay on the Fourth General Election of India (1967)

In several ways the Fourth General Elections were remarkable. Jawaharlal Nehru was no more and the Congress Party was fighting a general election for the first time without him. The new leader of the party was Indira Gandhi and this was the first general election under her leadership which itself was yet to be firmly established.

The opposition parties were fully aware of the weaknesses of the ruling party and were bent upon exploiting them in their bid to capture power both at the Centre and in the States. There were, however, two developments which made the opposition less united and more divided than during the Third General Elections.

First, the Communist Party of India was split too two, the C.P.I, and the Communist Party Marxist (C.P.M.). Secondly, a number of new smaller parties had emerged in the States, mostly splinter groups taking their origin from the existing parties.

The results of the Fourth General Elections showed that the Congress party was no more an impregnable fortress that it once was and as a consequence it lost heavily both at the Centre and in the States. For the first time since the inauguration of the Constitution the party lost control of several States including the States of West Bengal and Madras.

As against 361 seats which the Congress had won in the Lok Sabha in 1962 with 44.73 per cent rotes, it was able to secure only 284 seats with 40.82 per cent of the total votes polled. Among the lopposition, the Swatantra Party got the leading position with 42 seats as against 18 in 1962 and 8.54 per cent votes. Swatantra was followed by the Jan Sangh with 35 seats and 9.29 per cent votes. In 1962 Jan Sangh had only 14 seats in the Lok Sabha.

The split has far-reaching adverse effect on both Communist parties. While the C.P.I got 23 seats as against 29 in 1962, the C.P.M. did rather well with 19 seats in their maiden contest. But together the Communist parties polled only 9.36 per cent (C.P.I. 4.90 and C.P.M., 4.46) votes as against 9.94 by the undivided party in 1962.

The S.S.P. tagged 23 seats as against 6 in 1962 with 4.89 per cent of votes. The P.S.P. was able to secure only 13 seats and 3.08 per cent votes. The number of independents had gone up by more than a 100 per cent, from 20 in 1962 to 43 in 1967. They had polled a total of 14.39 per cent votes as against 9.63 in 1967.

The opposition parties, viewed as a whole, had done much better than ever before. From 133 seats in 1962 their strength has gone up to 236 in 1967, a remarkable increase indeed. But viewed from another point of view their performance was unsatisfactory.

India’s Parliament was still without an officially recognised opposition party. For that status a party required a minimum of one-tenth of the total membership of the Lok Sabha. The Swatantra Party which led the opposition had only 42 members which were 10 short of the required minimum.

The Fourth General Elections for the first time gave several opposition parties opportunity to assume power in the States either alone or in combination. Tamil Nadu provided the most shocking results for the Congress party which had been ruling the State continuously for over two decades.

A regional party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (D.M.K.), scored a comfortable victory over the Congress, with an absolute majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly, enabling it to form a new : Government on its own strength.

The most remarkable feature of the elections there was that every leader of standing in the Congress Party was defeated by a D.M.K. candidate. Even the President of the Congress Party, K. Kamaraj, a former Chief Minister of the State, was defeated in an Assembly constituency. The Congress had suffered heavy losses in several other States also.

The most important among them were West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan. The only State which continued to be as strong a fortress as ever before was Maharashtra with a performance; which was even better than that in 1962.