The redrawn-map landslide
What happened
Indian National Congress held onto power once again, keeping the government it had led since the previous election.
It won 361 of the 494 seats up for election that year.
That left it 113 seats clear of a majority.
The Communist Party of India finished second, taking 29 seats on 9.9% of the vote.
That was a landslide: INC took 73.1% of all the seats in the house on 44.7% of the vote.
The campaign
Communist Party of India general secretary Ajoy Ghosh died on 13 January 1962, about five weeks before the vote. S A Dange became the party's first chairman and E M S Namboodiripad became general secretary as the CPI entered the campaign under new leadership.1
Jawaharlal Nehru led Congress into the election as prime minister — his third and final Lok Sabha campaign before his death in 1964.2
Socialist Party leader Ram Manohar Lohia contested the Phulpur constituency directly against Nehru, becoming his most prominent challenger. Lohia was defeated.3
The Swatantra Party, founded by C Rajagopalachari in 1959, fought its first Lok Sabha election this year, campaigning against Congress's economic controls, which Rajagopalachari called the licence-permit raj.4
Bharatiya Jana Sangh's sitting Balrampur MP, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, lost his seat to Congress candidate Subhadra Joshi, who had held it before losing it to him in 1957.5
- 1CPI general secretary Ajoy Ghosh dies weeks before the poll; party reshuffles leadership — Ajoy Ghosh, S. A. Dange
- 2Nehru leads Congress into his third and final Lok Sabha campaign — 1962 Indian general election
- 3Ram Manohar Lohia challenges Nehru directly at Phulpur — Ram Manohar Lohia
- 4Swatantra Party fights its first general election, opposing Congress economic controls — C. Rajagopalachari, Swatantra Party
- 5Vajpayee, sitting Balrampur MP, defeated by Congress's Subhadra Joshi — Subhadra Joshi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee
What changed
This was the first election held on a fresh set of constituency boundaries, redrawn once more since the last vote.
The Election Commission held the poll over 19-25 February 1962, and for the first time every constituency elected a single member, ending the two-member system used in the first two elections.6
The redraw is called delimitation — the official redrawing of constituency boundaries, which happens every so often as India's population shifts.
Every one of the 494 constituencies this year elected exactly one MP, matching the 494-seat house one-for-one.
- 6Third general election held over 19–25 February 1962, first with single-member seats — 1962 Indian general election
Notable numbers
About 54.7% of registered voters turned out to cast a ballot — the highest share recorded in any general election up to that point.
The tightest finish of the election was in Outer Manipur, Manipur, decided by 42 votes, the narrowest margin of any seat that year — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second.
At the other extreme, the winner in Bhanjanagar, Odisha won by 72.1% of the vote over the runner-up — the widest margin of any single seat that year, measured as a share of the vote rather than in votes.
The highest turnout anywhere was in Nagapattinam, Madras, at 80.7%.
The biggest single electorate was in Bombay City North, Maharashtra, with 7,64,016 registered voters — more than any other constituency that year.
The most crowded ballot of the election was in Jaipur, Rajasthan, where 11 candidates stood.
The backdrop
C Rajagopalachari founded the free-market, anti-socialist Swatantra Party on 4 June 1959 after breaking with Congress. It contested its first general election in 1962, winning 18 Lok Sabha seats.7
Other new political forces made their first mark in parliament that year too.
SWA, DMK, and SOC crossed into serious seat counts for the first time this election.
- 7Swatantra Party Founded — Swatantra Party