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Journalism of Courage
The BJP stormed back to power in Gujarat for the seventh consecutive time last week by winning 156 of the 182 Assembly seats, garnering a whopping 52.5 per cent of the votes. Its vote share in the 2017 Assembly elections five years ago was 49.05 per cent.
Here, we look at some other instances of parties getting a vote share of over 50 per cent:
1989: The Sikkim Sangram Parishad (70.41 per cent)
The NB Bhandari-led Sikkim Sangram Parishad won all the seats in the 32-member House and got a 70.41 per cent vote share in the Assembly polls that year. Subsequently, the ruling party fragmented into two groups. A motion of confidence in the Council of Ministers headed by the Bhandari was moved by party leader SK Pradhan on May 1994. The motion was defeated and Shri Sanchaman Limboo was elected the Leader of the House. He formed a new Congress government that lasted the remaining term of the Assembly.
1962: National Conference (66.96 per cent)
The party won 70 of the 75 seats in the first elections conducted by the Election Commission of India in the former state of Jammu and Kashmir. Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed went on to become the state’s Prime Minister. Jammu and Kashmir had its own Prime Minister and Sadr-e-Riyasat until 1965, when the J&K Constitution was amended (Sixth Constitution of J&K Amendment Act, 1965) by the then Congress government that replaced the two positions with Chief Minister and Governor respectively.
2009: Sikkim Democratic Front (65.91 per cent)
The eighth Sikkim Assembly was also single-party House, with all 32 seats going to the Sikkim Democratic Front led by Pawan Chamling. The party was been in power between December 1994 and May 2019. Chamling is the longest-serving CM in the history of the country.
2015: Aam Aadmi Party (54.34 per cent)
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept the elections in the national Capital in 2015 by winning 67 seats of the 70 seats. The exit polls at the time gave the AAP a decisive edge over the BJP, with one of them giving it as high as 53 seats in the 70-member House. But no agency came close to guessing the eventual landslide victory. With the BJP winning three seats, it fell short of their estimate of 34-38 seats.
1990: Janata Party (53.69 per cent) Odisha
The key figure in Odisha politics, Biju Patnaik, joined the Janata Party after the Emergency. He came back to the limelight after the defeat of Congress in the 1989 general elections. In the 1990 Assembly elections, the Janata Party won 123 of the 139 seats. Patnaik was given the chief ministerial post, which he retained till 1995.
