Holding on, with fewer seats
What happened
Indian National Congress held on to power again, though with fewer seats than it had won last time.
It won 283 of the 520 seats on offer.
That left it 22 seats clear of a majority.
The Swatantra Party finished second, taking 44 seats on 8.7% of the vote.
The party's vote share — the slice of all ballots cast that went to one party or candidate — reached 40.8%, a smaller share than its 54.4% of the seats would suggest.
The campaign
Congress denied V K Krishna Menon renomination for his North East Bombay seat, after the Bombay Provincial Congress Committee objected that he was not a Maharashtrian. Menon resigned and stood for the seat as an independent.1
In Madras State, the DMK, led by C N Annadurai, allied with the Swatantra Party, led by C Rajagopalachari, along with the CPI(M) and the Indian Union Muslim League, against Congress across the state's 39 constituencies.2
The DMK's manifesto promised rice at one rupee a measure, among the first Indian party manifestos to campaign on a subsidised rice price. The Jana Sangh's manifesto, under party president Deendayal Upadhyaya, pledged a Uniform Civil Code alongside a nationwide ban on cow slaughter.34
In Kerala, the CPI(M), led by E M S Namboodiripad, formed a seven-party United Front with the CPI, the Samyukta Socialist Party and others to contest Congress in the simultaneous state assembly election.5
The Election Commission ran the vote from 17 to 21 February 1967, with state assembly elections held simultaneously across most of the country — the last time the two levels of polling were fully synchronised nationwide.6
- 1Krishna Menon Denied Congress Ticket, Contests as Independent — V. K. Krishna Menon, V. K. Krishna Menon, India: Return of the Enemies (Time, 23 May 1969, retrospective)
- 2DMK Leads Anti-Congress Front in Madras State — 1967 Indian general election in Madras State
- 3DMK Manifesto Promises Rice at One Rupee a Measure — Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
- 4Jana Sangh Manifesto Pledges Uniform Civil Code — Bharatiya Jana Sangh
- 5Seven-Party United Front Contests Kerala — 1967 Kerala Legislative Assembly election, 1967 Kerala Legislative Assembly election
- 6Fourth General Election Held 17–21 February 1967 — 1967 Indian general election
What changed
This was also the first election held on freshly redrawn constituency boundaries.
The Delimitation Commission Act, 1962 created India's second Delimitation Commission, formed in January 1963 to redraw constituencies using 1961 census data. Its new boundaries, finalised in 1966, were first used in the 1967 general election — not the 1962 poll held just before the commission was set up — which elected 520 Lok Sabha members, more than in 1962.
Those boundaries had just gone through delimitation — the official redrawing of constituency boundaries, which happens every so often as India's population shifts.
The Lok Sabha itself grew larger, from 494 seats to 520.
Its map shifted underneath too, as one long-serving state was split apart into smaller pieces just months before the vote.
Parliament's Punjab Reorganisation Act, passed in September 1966, split the old Punjab state on 1 November 1966: most of its territory formed the new state of Haryana, some hill areas went to Himachal Pradesh, and Chandigarh became a shared union territory capital. The 1967 election was the first held under this new map.
Notable numbers
About 59.9% of registered voters turned out to cast a ballot — a record for any general election up to that point.
That figure leaves out 1 seat where the original result never recorded a turnout percentage — the vote there was cast, but that particular number never made it into the printed record.
The closest race: Karnal, Haryana was decided by 203 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 Bikaner, Rajasthan won by 63.8% 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 84.7%.
6,44,638 voters were registered in Bombay North East, Maharashtra, more than any other constituency that year.
The most crowded ballot of the election was in Kairana, Uttar Pradesh, where 14 candidates stood.
The backdrop
Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died suddenly in Tashkent on 11 January 1966, a day after signing a peace declaration with Pakistan. After a brief caretaker period, INC elected Indira Gandhi as its parliamentary leader on 19 January, and she was sworn in as Prime Minister on 24 January 1966.7
Beyond the change in leadership, a handful of newer parties made their first real mark in parliament.
SSP, CPM, and BAC crossed into serious seat counts for the first time this election.
- 7Indira Gandhi Becomes Prime Minister — Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi