Bombay's last election, on a bigger map
Congress won Bombay's much bigger second assembly election, its last before the state split into Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Bombay's last election, on a bigger map
What happened
Congress won Bombay's second Vidhan Sabha election, holding on to power again.
The Indian National Congress won 234 of the 396 seats on offer.
That left it 35 seats clear of the assembly's 199-seat majority mark.
Its closest rival was not a party at all: Independent candidates together won 64 seats.
What changed
This was Bombay State's second general election, and its last — held in a state that had just grown far larger.
The assembly grew from 317 seats to 396.
Some constituencies used a multi-member design, sending more than one member to the assembly from a single contest.
57 of the 339 constituencies elected two members each.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from the results stand out on their own.
The closest race was in Gangapur, Bombay, decided by just 61 votes.
The widest win was in Kutiyana, Bombay, where the winner finished 86.8% ahead of the runner-up.
Sakoli, Bombay had the largest electorate that year, with 1,45,846 registered voters.
Across the state, about 54.3% of registered voters turned out to cast a ballot — the highest turnout Bombay State ever recorded.
The backdrop
This election followed a major reorganisation of India's states.
On 1 November 1956, the States Reorganisation Act merged the former Saurashtra and Kutch states and the Marathi-speaking Marathwada (Hyderabad State) and Vidarbha (Madhya Pradesh) districts into Bombay State, creating an enlarged bilingual state locally called 'Maha Dwibhashi Rajya'. It was reorganised again in 1960 into Maharashtra and Gujarat.