400 paar? It has happened only once – this is how

Three days from now, we will finally know how close the BJP or NDA finishes to its touted seat target of “400 paar”. In India’s electoral history, a party has crossed that number only once, when the Congress won 414 seats (of the 541 that voted) in the Lok Sabha elections that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

Even in the initial years following Independence, when the Congress was the predominant party, its numbers were more modest – between 1951-52 and until 1977, the party’s highest seat tally was 371 in 1957, while it won more than 300 seats in 1951-52, 1957, 1962 and 1971. In the post-Emergency election of 1977 though, the Congress won just 154 seats. By 1980, it had recovered to 353 seats.

Rajiv Gandhi, who had been selected hurriedly as interim Prime Minister in the aftermath of his mother’s killing, formed the government in 1984. However, that overwhelming majority did not mean that his government was free of troubles. In fact, it remained beset with problems, from the Shah Bano verdict to opening of the locks of the temple at Babri Masjid, to the Bofors scam.

In 1989, the Congress lost power, winning 197 seats, with a coalition of parties under the Janata Dal forming the government.

While the Congress would form a government three times in the following years, it never got an absolute majority – winning 244 seats in 1991 (against the majority mark of 272), 145 in 2004 and 206 in 2009.

Not only did the Congress win a record-high number of seats in the general elections that year, it also got the highest ever vote share for a single party, at 48.12%. The last time a party had come close to this before it was when the Congress got 47.78% of the votes in the second general elections after Independence, in 1957.

Since