Answers: Parliamentary Elections in India

Narendra Modi is India’s Prime Minister for a third straight time, emulating Jawaharlal Nehru who led the Indian National Congress to victory three times in a row in 1952, 1957 and 1962. But Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could not match Nehru’s record of leading the Congress to a majority three times in a row. The BJP had to settle for 240 seats, short of the majority mark of 272. Unlike 2014 and 2019, it needed its pre-poll National Democratic Alliance (NDA) allies for a governing majority. The Congress party, which dominated Indian politics for decades after independence from Britain in 1947 was routed in 2014 and 2019 but is showing signs of a revival with 99 seats (way behind the BJP but a significant improvement from 44 seats in 2014 and 52 in 2019). The Congress is in the forefront of the INDIA grouping of several parties, which collectively won more than 230 seats.

This quiz looks at elections to India’s Lok Sabha (House of the People) from the past to the present and some of the personalities who shaped campaigns, wins and losses.

Answers

1) Sukumar Sen oversaw India’s first general elections in 1951-52 as the country’s first Chief Election Commissioner. Following his successful supervision of the mammoth poll exercise, Sen was appointed head of an international Mixed Electoral Commission to supervise an African country’s first parliamentary vote in November 1953. While this election was successful, the country since then has faced several military coups and is now in the grip of civil war. Which country?

Sudan. More about Sen’s work in Sudan here and here. More about Sudan and its ongoing civil war in my quiz here.

2) Which future Prime Minister’s only electoral contest ended in defeat in South Delhi in 1999?

Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014. More about his failed campaign in South Delhi here and here. Singh retired from the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) in April 2024 after a long tenure dating back to 1991 when he initiated transformative economic reforms as Finance Minister. The economist-politician is also featured in my earlier quiz here on Academics as National Leaders.

3) This future politician was honoured with the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2006 for ‘activating India's right-to-information movement at the grassroots’ and ‘empowering New Delhi's poorest citizens to fight corruption’. He unsuccessfully took on Narendra Modi in Varanasi in 2014. Who?

Arvind Kejriwal. He quit the Indian Revenue Service in 2006 to become an activist pushing for transparent governance. He was a key figure in the anti-corruption movement which hurt the credibility of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and paved the way for the Narendra Modi-led BJP’s rise to power in 2014. Kejriwal formed the Aam Aadmi Party in November 2012. It is in power in Delhi and Punjab but has not expanded its presence nationwide. Kejriwal is now in jail in a controversial corruption case. Though in jail, he is still the Chief Minister of India’s capital.

4) This high-profile opposition MP and sharp critic of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was turned away from a ‘whites-only’ restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi in the U.S. in May 1964. He returned the next day and refused to leave, forcing the police to arrest and drive him away from the restaurant before releasing him. The U.S. State Department formally apologised to the Indian ambassador but the politician retorted “it may go to hell”. On hearing the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations had apologised, he said the ambassador should instead apologise to the Statue of Liberty. Who?

Ram Manohar Lohia. More on the Socialist leader here, here, here and here

5) Two Sikh separatists won from Punjab as independent candidates in 2024. One of them is Sarabjeet Singh, whose mother and grandfather were also pro-separatist MPs in 1989. What act in 1984 is Sarabjeet Singh’s father notorious for?

Sarabjeet Singh’s father is Beant Singh, one of the two security guards who assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.

6) Another pro-separatist Sikh candidate in Punjab in 2024 was Simranjit Singh Mann (he lost). He was at his electoral peak in 1989 when he secured a huge majority while contesting from jail. But he refused to enter Parliament because he was not allowed to carry something for security reasons. What? (this is allowed in Canada’s Parliament)

Kirpan or sword that Sikhs wear for religious reasons. It is one of the five articles of faith in Sikhism.

7) The Janata Party’s Raj Narain pulled off the biggest upset win in Indian electoral history in 1977. Whom did he defeat?

Indira Gandhi. The Congress was defeated for the first time after India became independent. The Janata Party came to power in the elections held after an Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi citing ‘internal disturbance’. Civil liberties were suspended and opposition leaders were arrested en masse during the 1975-77 period.

8) Congress candidates A. Bimol Akoijam and Alfred Kanngam S. Arthur won both the seats in an Indian border state in 2024 in a shock result for the BJP which controls the state government. Which state?

Manipur. More on the conflict in the northeastern state in my quiz from last year.

9) He was Pakistan’s first Law and Labour Minister. Mohammad Ali Jinnah ensured that he presided over the first session of Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly, in which Jinnah was sworn in as Governor-General. But he was marginalised in the government after Jinnah’s death in 1948. The riots in 1950 targeting Hindus in East Pakistan were the last straw and he moved to India. He became an advocate for refugees but failed in subsequent attempts to make it to the West Bengal assembly as well as Parliament. Who?

Jogendra Nath Mandal. He belonged to the Dalit (formerly untouchable) community of Namasudras, who were mostly based in East Bengal. Mandal allied with Jinnah, advocating a Dalit-Muslim alliance to combat economic and social marginalisation. It was Mandal who ensured a seat in undivided India’s Constituent Assembly from Bengal for fellow Dalit leader B.R. Ambedkar, who later led the panel that drafted Independent India’s constitution (Ambedkar was thwarted in his home province of Bombay). Mandal moved to India and West Bengal after the riots in East Pakistan in 1950. His subsequent efforts to regain a foothold in electoral politics failed. More here, here and here

10) The uninhabited island of Katchatheevu which India ceded to another country in 1974 was briefly an election issue in 2024. Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Congress party, which was in power at the time, of “callously” giving it away. Which country controls Katchatheevu?

Sri Lanka. More here and here. The BJP-led NDA drew a blank in Tamil Nadu while the opposition INDIA grouping led by the DMK won all 39 seats in the state.

11) Amarnath Vidyalankar was a three-time MP with the Congress party. Earlier he was a state minister in Punjab and a freedom fighter, who was jailed during the independence movement. Vidyalankar’s American grandson is a high-profile Democratic Congressman from California. Who?

Ro Khanna, Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California. More here, here, here and here.

12) Inder Kumar Gujral became India’s External Affairs Minister in 1989 after being elected from Jalandhar in Punjab. The next year he hugged a controversial world leader during a diplomatic mission, angering Gulf Arab states as well as Western powers. Who did Gujral hug? (Gujral was known for his expertise in foreign policy and was Prime Minister for 11 months in 1997-98).

Saddam Hussein. This was after Iraq invaded Kuwait, even as India was trying to extricate its citizens out of Kuwait. Gujral’s action did help in the massive airlift of Indians from Jordan, after they were allowed to leave Kuwait via Iraq.

Later in 1996 Gujral formulated what became known as the ‘Gujral Doctrine’ during his second stint as External Affairs Minister. He envisaged that India would go the extra mile in relations with neighbours (except Pakistan) without seeking reciprocity.

13) Which future Prime Minister was shocked by the Congress’s Madhavrao Scindia of the former royal family in the Gwalior constituency in 1984 in a major electoral upset?

Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He was the president of the BJP, which won just two seats in the elections held after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The Congress led by Rajiv Gandhi won more than 400 seats in the best performance by any party in a parliamentary vote in India. Vajpayee later became the first Prime Minister from the BJP, first in 1996 for just 13 days and then from 1998-2004.

14) He was a longtime United Nations official and became Under-Secretary-General and a key adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He was backed by India in a failed bid to be the UN Secretary-General in 2006 but was thwarted by a U.S. veto. He returned to India after decades and was first elected to Parliament in 2009. He’s won three more times, including a close race in 2024. Who?

Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the southern state of Kerala. While Tharoor survived, the BJP had its first-ever parliamentary win from Kerala in 2024 from the Thrissur constituency.

15) Biju Patnaik was an aviator, industrialist and politician who was an MP, union cabinet minister and two-time Chief Minister of Odisha. At Jawaharlal Nehru’s request, he flew another Asian country’s Prime Minister to Delhi for the Asian Relations Conference held in March-April 1947, a significant event in the push to decolonise Asia. In July that year, Patnaik flew back to the Asian country defying a crackdown by the colonial power and spirited the Prime Minister to Delhi. India played an important role in exerting international pressure on the colonial power to leave. It started withdrawing in 1949. Name the Asian country and the colonial power.

Indonesia and the Netherlands.

16) His books The Garden of Life: An Introduction to the Healing Plants of India and A Second Paradise: Indian Courtly Life 1590-1947 were commissioned and edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for the publisher Doubleday. He was a surprise entrant in politics after his politician father’s death. He became an MP, union cabinet minister and state Chief Minister. Who?

Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister of Odisha from 2000 to 2024 and the son of Biju Patnaik. His party Biju Janata Dal was defeated by the BJP in assembly elections in 2024, narrowly preventing him from becoming the longest-serving Chief Minister of an Indian state.

17) In the initial phases of its 2024 campaign, a BJP slogan was ‘Abki bar 400 par' (this time surpassing 400 seats), which ended up being way off the mark. The Congress remains the only party to cross 400 seats in a parliamentary election in India. Who led the party in that campaign?

Rajiv Gandhi. Indira Gandhi’s son led the Congress to a massive majority in 1984 in the elections held soon after her assassination. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is included in my earlier quiz here on Political Dynasties.

18) This former Prime Minister’s novel is set in the fictional region of Afrozabad. The main protagonist Anand becomes Chief Minister of Afrozabad and eventually Prime Minister of the country. Four real-life Prime Ministers feature in this novel with autobiographical shades. In real-life this author-politician made it to the Guinness Book Of World Records for winning a Lok Sabha by-election with a record margin. Who?

P.V. Narasimha Rao, India’s Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996. The novel was The Insider. More here, here, here and here. Rao in real life was Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh from 1971 to 1973. The lifelong Congress politician was a cabinet minister under Indira and Rajiv Gandhi from 1980 to 1989. He had withdrawn from active politics when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by LTTE rebels from Sri Lanka in 1991. The Congress chose Rao as its leader after Rajiv’s widow Sonia Gandhi refused. Rao along with Finance Minister Manmohan Singh initiated economic liberalisation measures in 1991.

More here and here on how Narasimha Rao re-oriented India’s foreign policy while navigating the end of the Cold War.