Indian General Election of 1977
The Janata coalition won 298 seats, ending thirty years of Congress rule after the Emergency.
Overview
The March 1977 election, Indira Gandhi's surprise concession after lifting her 1975-77 Emergency, punished her jailing of opponents and forced sterilizations. The Janata coalition, merging opposition parties and Morarji Desai's leadership, won 298 of 542 seats to Congress's 154, with Indira and son Sanjay both losing their own seats. The peaceful transfer restored civil liberties and proved Indian democracy's self-correction capacity. Indira's 1980 comeback and the coalition's split followed, but 1977 remains the world's largest democracy's defining assertion against authoritarian drift.
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