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 march 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.

Questions

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?

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

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?

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?

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?

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)

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

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?

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?

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?

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?

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).

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?

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?

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.

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?

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?

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?