268 Addenda and Corrigenda

New Source (other than those for section IX in general)

R. Jahan (1972).

This map, placed in the end cover of the atlas, replaces the end- cover overlay map printed for HASA 1978. The content of the original map, reflecting the situation as of 1972 for districts and 1975 for higher order administrative divisions, is duplicated on atlas plate IX.A.3 (p. 79). This new map reflects (with one excep- tion for Afghanistan, noted above) the latest administrative bound- ary information attainable prior to publication and shows hundreds of changes, mainly in respect to the creation of new administrative districts.

New Sources (other than those for section IX in general)

Government Documents: United Nations (1946–), Treaty series; United States, Department of State (various), all items listed.

Atlases: National atlas of Sri Lanka (1988); Pakistan, Survey of (1986); J. R. V. Prescott (1977).

Unbound Maps (abbreviated titles, rather than authorities, are cited): Afghanistan (1982); Bangladesh (c. 1984), (1990); India (1984), (1991); Indian Subcontinent (1984); Nepal (1987), (1989); Pakistan (1991); South Asia (1984).

GENERAL

This section supplements and continues through June 1991 the map series IX.B.1–6 of HASA 1978, covering important elections in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, and Nepal over the period 1947–73. We here provide, in tabular form, most of the same types of information as were provided cartographically in the earlier work as well as information not previously included. Although elections for the period 1974–78 were mapped in black and white in HASA 1978 in a section entitled "Late Particulars" (former pp. 263–266), the entirety of that section has been omitted from this edition. Its contents in respect to elections have been recast and integrated into what follows.

Reading the text and tables of this section in conjunction with other portions of the atlas is recommended. The end-cover "Polit- ical Conspectus of South Asia," for example, will indicate certain facts that cannot be derived solely from the election tables, specif- ically: (a) which parties entered into coalitions to form state and provincial governments where no single party obtained more than 50% of all seats in an Assembly election; (b) the periods when normal parliamentary or assembly rule was suspended or when the control of government passed from one party or coalition to an- other (e.g., because of the imposition of martial law or president's rule, defections from one party to another, etc.); and (c) the names of persons voted into office at the national level. Space limitations preclude a detailed analysis of the political context of the elections or a full explanation of their outcomes, especially at the sub-national level; but much of this relevant information can be derived from the graphic presentation IX.D.2, "Social, Economic, and Political Disturbances and Insurrectionary Movements, 1972–1990," and the related text, as well as from the end-cover "Chronology of South Asia." Therefore, remarks here are confined to the most salient and relevant considerations and to a few broad generaliza- tions about the nature of South Asian politics over the period un- der consideration, with particular concern for its essential regional variations.

New Sources (other than those for section IX in general)

H. W. Blair (1979); N. D. Palmer (1975).

For the results of Lok Sabha by-elections between successive general elections, see Table IX.B.1.a–5.a and 7.a–9.a on page 270. (N.B. For convenience of presentation, the results of all by- elections up to the 9th General Election are grouped.)

New Sources (in addition to those listed for IX.B in general)

P. D. Reeves et al. (1975); R. Roy (1975); V. B. Singh and Shan- kar Bose (1986), listed under "General References."

Elections in these four countries (Sri Lanka, rather than Ceylon after 1972) from 1977 to 1991 are discussed under IX.B.12 below.

New Sources (in addition to those listed for IX.B in general)

G. P. S. H. De Silva (1979); K. M. De Silva, ed. (1981); R. Jahan (1972); S. Ponnambalam (1983); A. J. Wilson (1988).

General

The tables presented on pages 269–274 are of two principal types, those that relate to: (a) general elections to the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament), and (b) elections to the State Legis- lative Assemblies (Vidhan Sabhas), which may or may not be held concurrently with the Lok Sabha elections. A supplementary table relates to Lok Sabha by-elections between successive General Elections. In studying the tables, the reader will need to refer to the lists of conventions employed for recording the results and to the key to the abbreviations for the 140 political parties for which information is recorded. These aids appear on page 269. Because of the schisms that have occurred within India's traditionally dom- inant party, the Indian National Congress, and its several off-shoots, the following explanatory note precedes the discussion of the elec- tions themselves.

Note on the Indian National Congress and Derivative Parties

The presidents and venues of the Indian National Congress from its inception in 1885 to 1971 are indicated on page 71 (plate VIII.C.3). From 1971 to 1977, the following persons were elected to the presidency of the Congress party at sessions in the places indicated in parentheses: 1971, D. Sanjivayya (Ahmedabad); 1972, Shankar Dayal Sharma (Calcutta); 1975, D.K. Barooah (Chandi- garh); and 1976, Brahmananda Reddy (New Delhi). The Opposi- tion Congress (INCO), established in 1969, went out of existence in 1977 when it merged with the Janata Party. In January 1978, Indira Gandhi and a group of her followers, meeting in New Delhi, broke away from the party led by Reddy and proclaimed them- selves the "genuine" Indian National Congress, or Indian Na- tional Congress (Indira), under the presidency of Mrs. Gandhi. Although the Election Commission initially awarded the Reddy- led group the right to use the INC electoral symbol, Mrs. Gandhi's faction quickly emerged as the dominant party and was so recog- nized by the Election Commission in a new ruling in July 1981, retaining the initials INCI. The INCI reelected Mrs. Gandhi as its president in 1983 in Calcutta and, following her death in 1984, chose her son, Rajiv Gandhi, to succeed her. On Rajiv's death in 1991 P. V. Narasimha Rao was elected to the party presidency.

In September 1979, Devaraj Urs, who had been expelled from the INCI in July, was elected president of the INC, which subse- quently came to be referred to as the INCU to better distinguish it from the already dominant INCI faction. A split within the INCU occurred in August 1981 when a faction led by the Scheduled Caste leader, Jagjivan Ram, broke away and thereafter became the INCJ. Later that month Urs resigned and the presidency fell to Sharad Pawar, under whose leadership the party officially renamed itself the INC (Socialist), or INCS, for short, in October.

IX.B.5.b. Elections of 1974–75 and the Period of Emergency Rule

For reasons explained on page 226, Indira Gandhi's popularity reached an all-time high in the early 1970s. The several state elec- tions held in 1974 and 1975, however, reflected a sharp swing away from Congress. This disaffection was largely the result of the economic hardship brought on by the OPEC price rises for petroleum beginning in 1973, poor harvests (caused by inadequate supplies of fertilizer and diesel fuel), resultant high prices for food, the sense that the government was not realizing its economics goals, and a High Court finding that Mrs. Gandhi was guilty of certain relatively minor electoral malpractices. These circumstances led to widespread anti-government demonstrations, at times occasioned by violence, demands for Mrs. Gandhi's resignation, and to the opposition's call to the police and army not to obey orders to dis- perse peaceful protest demonstrations. Her response was the im- position in June 1975 of emergency rule, incarceration of the lead- ers of the opposition, suspension of many civil liberties, and other draconian measures for which there was no precedent in India's post-independence history.

The tough discipline imposed during the period of emergency rule; the crackdown on black marketeers, hoarders, and tax evad- ers; and the sharp drop in the rate of inflation won admiration for Mrs. Gandhi among some segments of the Indian population, es- pecially the growing middle class. At the same time, certain activ- ities directed by Mrs. Gandhi's son and heir apparent, Sanjay, led to considerable popular revulsion. These included excessively zealous slum-clearance programs and a vigorous campaign for population control, marked in certain cases by compulsory sterili- zation (and a perception among some Muslims that they were being targeted for genocide).

Addendum for Sikkim

Not tabulated among the state elections for India is the Septem- ber 1974 election for the Sikkim legislature in which the anti-cho- gyal Sikkim Congress won 31 of 32 seats and the Sikkim National Party only one. This election proved to be a prelude to Sikkim's merger with India the following year (see addenda for IX.C.1).

IX.B.7. Elections from 1977 to 1979

Perhaps misled by a tightly censored press, Mrs. Gandhi over- estimated the favorable response to the government's actions dur- ing the period of emergency rule and underestimated the unfavor- able. In any event, she opted to suspend the emergency and allow new elections to be held in March 1977. This date fell later than the original statutory limit of the term of the Lok Sabha elected in 1971; but the forty-second amendment to the Indian constitution (subsequently repealed) had extended the terms of the national and state legislatures from five to six years. The polling resulted in a substantial and wholly unanticipated victory for the hastily- assembled, multiparty, anti-Congress coalition that was to form India's first non-Congress government. The chief component of the new coalition was the Janata Party, led by a venerable leader of the freedom struggle and former deputy prime minister, Morarji Desai. The Congress defeat in the Hindi-speaking heartland, where its strength had previously seen little challenge, was almost total; in a number of important states it won not a single seat. By con- trast, in the south and in some other peripheral areas where the excesses of emergency rule were less keenly felt, Congress fared rather well. In still other peripheral states, either the two Com- munist parties or regional parties such as Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADK) maintained their strength in Parliament or even gained new seats.

In the one state, Kerala, where a Vidhan Sabha election was held concurrently with that for the Lok Sabha in March 1977, a coalition government, including a dominant left-wing block and the INC, was maintained. In many other states, however, where the JNP coalition won all or most of the Lok Sabha seats, hold-over Congress ministries continued to rule. Under the circumstances, the new Janata regime in New Delhi concluded that the Congress- led governments in many states no longer represented the will of the people, who had repudiated the INC at the national level. Ac- cordingly, president's rule was declared in nine such states in April and new elections were called for June. This action was precipi- tated by President Fakhruddin Ahmed's death in February and the constitutionally-mandated need to appoint a successor (selected by an electoral college made up largely from the state legislatures) within six months of his demise. Janata felt, correctly, that their presidential nominee, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, would be assured of victory if they were in firm control of additional states. Riding the popular wave that brought them to power, Janata won decisively in eight states. Only in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal did they lose, respectively, to the locally entrenched ADK and to a coali- tion led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM).

Rifts within the ideologically diverse coalition at the center, however, soon began to appear. Supported from without by the Communists and from within by the Socialists on the one hand, and including Hindu communalists on the other, there was little to hold the coalition together apart from its opposition to Congress. The thirty months during which Desai held power were marked by political drift, policies only marginally different from those of Congress, and few major successes, either domestically or inter- nationally, other than a victory in the presidential race and the revocation of several Constitutional amendments pushed through Parliament during the emergency. Losing its parliamentary major- ity in July 1979, Desai's ministry was replaced by a new coalition led by his deputy prime minister, Charan Singh, head of the Bha- ratiya Lok Dal party and a champion of the middle peasantry. Desai's regime turned out to be even more unstable and short-lived than the one it replaced.

Despite the fact that the Congress party split in the aftermath of its 1977 fiasco (see note on Congress above), the faction led by Indira Gandhi, the Indian National Congress (Indira), or INCI, quickly began to gain strength, winning state assembly elections in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, where, in February 1978, it badly defeated both Janata and the faction of Congress recognized as "official" by the national Election Commission, and a number of by-elections as well.

IX.B.8. Elections from 1980 to April 1984

The victories of the INCI in the state-level elections of 1978 proved to be the harbingers of Mrs. Gandhi's return to power in January 1980. This was India's first general election precipitated by the government's loss of a working majority. The no longer united remnants of the anti-Congress government coalition were then rejected, particularly in the aforementioned Hindi heartland, almost as completely as the coalition had previously been em- braced.

Taking her cue from the actions of Janata three years previ- ously, Mrs. Gandhi called for June legislative assembly elections in states with opposition-led ministries which the INCI had won in the Lok Sabha voting. In eight such states INCI victories, mostly decisive, were registered. Only in Tamil Nadu, where the INCI had won a bare majority of Lok Sabha seats (20 of 39), did it lose the assembly election, again to the ADK. However, as was the case with Janata, the power of the new regime began to wane soon after its initial successes. Rather than ideological disarray, how- ever, the forces that plagued Mrs. Gandhi's regime were largely those of regionalism, communal strife, casteism, and intraparty factionalism. The separatist movements in Punjab and Assam were