A second term, again without a majority
What happened
Congress won again in Odisha, but without a majority of its own.
The Indian National Congress took 56 of the 140 seats — short of the 71-seat majority mark, a hung house, where no single party wins enough seats to govern alone.
Its nearest rival, the Ganatantra Parishad, won 51 seats.
What changed
This was again an assembly built on multi-member seats, the same design used at Odisha's first election.
39 of the 101 constituencies worked this way again.
The field also gained a new party for the first time: PSP won seats of its own.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The closest fight was in Anandpur, Odisha, decided by just 128 votes — the narrowest margin, how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second, of any seat that year.
At the other end, Loisingha, Odisha produced the widest margin of the election, with the winner finishing 61.3% ahead of the runner-up.
Tirtol, Odisha recorded the best turnout of the election — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — at 60.5%.
The most crowded contest was Phulbani, Odisha, where 15 candidates stood for one seat.
The backdrop
Congress's main opposition through this period came from parties rooted in the former princely states, not from a single national rival.
The Ganatantra Parishad, formed in October 1950 by former Orissa princely-state rulers under Rajendra Narayan Singh Deo, was Orissa's main opposition party through the 1950s, briefly forming a coalition government with Congress from May 1959 to February 1961. After the 1962 general election it merged into the Orissa unit of the Swatantra Party.
The GP remained the largest such voice this year.