Unlike the Thirteenth General Elections, the fourteenth General Elections saw the National Democratic Alliance entering the electoral arena with full confidence of its victory. They expected Vajpayee to head the Indian Government for one more term.
Unfortunately the NDA hopes were dashed to the ground and falsifying all expert election forecasts, the Congress Party and its allies were declared victorious. BJP which expected to win 300 seats could get only 138 whereas the Congress Party won 145 seats.
In the Thirteenth General Elections the BJP had won 182 seats whereas the Congress had only 116. The Marxist Communist Party secured 43 seats as against 33 in 1999. Among other parties, the DMK (16), RJD (21), NCP (9), CPI (10) were all with the Congress Party.
If in the First General Elections in 1952 the total number of voters was 17.1 million, fifty-two years later in 2004, the total electorate was 670 million! The world has never seen an electorate as large as that. There were over 700,000 polling stations. The total number of candidates was 5435. For the first time Electronic Voting Machines were used throughout the country.
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Millions of officials were deployed for the conduct of the elections. It was indeed the biggest ballot show ever. Also relatively peaceful and free and fair elections. The overall percentage was 57.86. In 1999 it was 59.99. There were only 44 women among the 539 elected members.
Election 2004 is acclaimed by many not the constituents of NDA as a triumph of secularism, one of the basic principles of the Constitution, of India.
But if secularism means endorsing a modern view which does not see religious distinctions among the electorate as a hindrance to cooperative state action, their number seems to have been rather small. On the other hand a large number of voters seem to have given greater importance to their basic needs and economic well-being than anything else. In this sense Election 2004 was a triumph of secularism.
Another aspect of the election which was widely canvassed by the NDA and its allies was the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi, the Congress leader. The electorate in general seems to have given no great importance to this issue. This too may be considered as a triumph of secularism. On the whole, Election 2004 has been a watershed in the onward march of democracy in India.
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On criminalisation of politics, the Election Commission of India has urged the Government that there was a need to bar persons who were charge-sheeted for offences punishable with imprisonment for five years and more from contesting elections. The Commission hoped that the Government will take electoral reforms as priority number one.