Congress returns, but the field stays crowded
What happened
Congress returned to power, though no party came close to a majority.
The Indian National Congress won 51 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 Swatantra Party, won 36 seats.
What changed
Results shifted heavily from the previous election, with many constituencies swapping which party held them.
88 of the 140 constituencies elected a different party than they had in 1967.
The largest single movement ran from the SWA to the INC, picking up 13 of those seats.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The tightest fight anywhere was Khunta, Odisha, decided by just 15 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, Berhampur, Odisha produced the widest margin of the election, with the winner finishing 63.2% ahead of the runner-up.
Rourkela, Odisha stood out twice over: it was both the state's biggest constituency, with 1,05,764 names on the roll, and its most contested, drawing 13 candidates.
The backdrop
Odisha's opposition stayed fragmented through this period, split across several regional and national parties.
New parties also entered the field for the first time: the UTC and JKP.