Electoral verdict

The 1967 elections were the first general elections the Congress Party contested without Jawaharlal Nehru. They took place against a backdrop of rising public discontent and a sharp polarisation of political forces. The results were so unexpected that contemporary observers called them a "political earthquake."

At the national level, the Congress did manage to scrape together a majority in the Lok Sabha, but it was its worst performance since 1952 — the lowest tally of seats and the lowest share of votes it had ever recorded. Half the ministers in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet lost their own seats. Among the prominent Congress leaders who were defeated were Kamaraj in Tamil Nadu, S.K. Patil in Maharashtra, Atulya Ghosh in West Bengal, and K.B. Sahay in Bihar.

The shock was even greater at the state level. The Congress lost its majority in seven states outright. In two more states, defections by its own legislators prevented it from forming a government. These nine states where Congress lost power were spread across the country:

• Punjab
• Haryana
• Uttar Pradesh
• Madhya Pradesh
• Bihar
• West Bengal
• Orissa
• Madras
• Kerala

In Madras (now Tamil Nadu), a regional party — the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) — won a clear majority on its own. This was the first time any non-Congress party had secured a majority in any Indian state. The DMK’s victory followed a massive anti-Hindi agitation by students, who opposed the central government’s move to impose Hindi as the sole official language.

In the other eight states, coalition governments were formed by various non-Congress parties. A popular saying at the time captured the mood: one could take a train from Delhi to Howrah and not pass through a single Congress-ruled state. For a generation that had known only Congress rule, this was a strange and unsettling feeling.