50 Fun Facts About Indian Politics

Which Prime Minister declared the 1975 Emergency after being unseated by the Allahabad High Court?

Indira Gandhi's Emergency, from 1975 to 1977, saw opposition leaders jailed. A judge had found her guilty of misusing government machinery in her 1971 campaign.

Which two banknotes did India void overnight on 8 November 2016, cancelling about 86% of the cash in circulation?

The ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes were declared invalid from midnight in a televised address, with new ₹500 and ₹2,000 notes issued in their place. Queues formed outside banks for weeks as people swapped the old paper.

Which party, formed from the 2011 anti-corruption protests, won 67 of Delhi's 70 seats in 2015 under a broom symbol?

The Aam Aadmi Party, 'Common Man Party', was launched by Arvind Kejriwal on 26 November 2012 after he and Anna Hazare parted ways over entering politics; the Election Commission approved its broom for the 2013 Delhi poll.

Which ballot option, ordered by the Supreme Court in 2013, lets Indian voters formally reject every candidate on offer?

NOTA, short for 'none of the above', is only a protest in parliamentary polls: the candidate with the most votes still wins.

Which device, first tried in a 1982 by-election in Kerala, was used in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies by 2004?

India's electronic voting machine made its debut at Paravur in Kerala in May 1982, and the 2004 general election was the first fought entirely on the machines. Paper ballots had been the rule since the first poll of 1951–52.

Which Prime Minister governed for ten years from the upper house after losing a Lok Sabha contest in 1999?

Manmohan Singh represented Assam in Parliament's upper house from 1991, the year he became the finance minister behind India's economic reforms.

Which provision, the source of Jammu and Kashmir's special status, was rendered inoperative in August 2019?

Article 370 had limited which parts of the Indian Constitution applied in Jammu and Kashmir; the 2019 order applied all of it, and Parliament then split the state into two union territories, born on 31 October 2019.

Which tax did India introduce on 1 July 2017?

The Goods and Services Tax was once due to start in 2010 but was delayed for seven years before replacing levies such as VAT and octroi.

Which city, planned by Le Corbusier, is a union territory that serves as the capital of both Punjab and Haryana?

Chandigarh was built because Partition left Punjab's old capital, Lahore, in Pakistan, and it became a shared capital when Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1966. Its Capitol Complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Which Himalayan monarchy voted by 97.55% in a 1975 referendum to abolish its king and become a state of India?

Sikkim's Chogyal had ruled a protectorate of India; after the April 1975 vote a constitutional amendment made the kingdom India's 22nd state within weeks and abolished the Chogyal's office. Turnout was put at about 63 per cent.

Who became India's first non-Congress Prime Minister in 1977, taking the job at 81, the oldest ever to do so?

Morarji Desai had been jailed when the Emergency was declared in 1975 and was freed only in January 1977, two months before he took office.

Which former governor of Rajasthan took office in 2007 as India's first woman President?

Pratibha Patil was put forward as a compromise candidate after the ruling alliance's left-wing parties could not agree on other names.

Which philosopher-president's 5 September birthday has been marked as Teachers' Day in India at his own suggestion?

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, India's second President, told students who wanted to celebrate his birthday that it would be his 'proud privilege' if the day honoured teachers instead. He had held the Spalding chair at Oxford before politics.

Which house of India's Parliament cannot be dissolved, its members serving staggered six-year terms?

The Rajya Sabha voted down the anti-terror bill POTA in 2002, so the government passed it at a rare joint sitting, where the larger Lok Sabha held sway.

Which office, filled by a vote of MPs alone, carries the ex officio chairmanship of India's upper house?

The Vice President took over as acting President when President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed died in office.

Which state, formed on 2 June 2014, covers the Telugu-speaking districts of the former princely state of Hyderabad?

Telangana's statehood was set in motion by the TRS founder's 2009 fast-unto-death, which got the central government to start forming the state within two weeks; he became its first chief minister.

Which 2005 law lets any citizen demand records from a public authority, which must reply within 30 days?

The Right to Information Act grew out of a campaign by rural workers in Rajasthan who were fighting to be paid minimum wages.

Which 2005 scheme guaranteed 100 days of paid manual work a year to any rural household whose adults asked for it?

MGNREGA was hailed by the government as 'the largest and most ambitious social security and public works program in the world', yet in practice households averaged about 45 days of work, not 100.

Which anti-corruption ombudsman, demanded by Anna Hazare's 2011 fast in Delhi, was finally created by a 2013 Act?

The Lokpal bill had been introduced and dropped repeatedly since 1968 before it passed on 18 December 2013; the body can investigate even a sitting Prime Minister. Its state-level counterparts are called Lokayuktas.

Which elephant-symbol party, founded by Kanshi Ram in 1984, made Mayawati chief minister of Uttar Pradesh?

The Bahujan Samaj Party first kept Mayawati in office through short-lived coalitions from 1995, then won Uttar Pradesh on its own in 2007.

Which party, founded by Mamata Banerjee in 1998, ended 34 years of Left Front rule in West Bengal in 2011?

Trinamool Congress won so heavily in 2011 that the Left Front chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, lost his own seat; the party had won seven Lok Sabha seats in its first election, in 1998.

Which party did the cartoonist Bal Thackeray found in Bombay on 19 June 1966 as a Marathi regionalist movement?

Shiv Sena grew out of Marmik, the satirical cartoon weekly Thackeray had begun publishing in 1960; his nephew Raj later broke away to found the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, while his son Uddhav succeeded him as party chief.

Which Tamil Nadu party, founded by Annadurai in 1949, has a rising sun as its election symbol?

DMK began as a breakaway from Periyar's Dravidar Kazhagam, and Annadurai was still its general secretary when he died in 1969.

Which BJP-led coalition, formed in May 1998, ran the first non-Congress government to serve a full five-year term?

The National Democratic Alliance's first government lost a confidence vote by a single vote in April 1999, but it won that year's election with a larger majority and served the full term.

Which formation, launched in January 1977 by merging the main opposition groups, ended Congress's 30-year rule?

The Janata Party absorbed the Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Lok Dal, its constituents dissolving their separate identities to fight the post-Emergency election; by 1980 the Jana Sangh members had left to form the BJP.

Which 1973 ruling, argued over 68 days before 13 judges, put the Constitution's basic structure beyond Parliament?

The Kesavananda Bharati case began with the head of Edneer Matha, a Kerala monastery, fighting land-reform laws; a dissenting judge was then made Chief Justice over three senior judges from the majority.

Which 1976 rewrite, nicknamed the 'Mini-Constitution', added 'socialist' and 'secular' to the Preamble?

The 42nd Amendment also changed 'unity of the nation' to 'unity and integrity of the nation', bound the President to cabinet advice and put itself beyond judicial review, a part the Supreme Court struck down in Minerva Mills in 1980.

Which 1985 addition to the Constitution curbed 'Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram' party-hopping by disqualifying defectors?

The Tenth Schedule came in through the 52nd Amendment, and the phrase it targets mocks Gaya Lal, a Haryana legislator who switched parties three times in 1967.

Which Prime Minister, the first from south India, led the minority government that liberalised the economy in 1991?

P. V. Narasimha Rao had very nearly retired from politics in 1991 when the job fell to him, and the reforms his government began in a balance-of-payments crisis have been kept by every successor. A polyglot, he spoke 17 languages.

Which Prime Minister implemented the Mandal Commission's job quotas for backward castes in 1990, igniting protests?

V. P. Singh's government fell within months of the announcement, but in 1992 the Supreme Court upheld the 27 per cent quota he had brought in.

Which Prime Minister's first government lasted under three weeks in 1996 before he resigned for lack of support?

Atal Bihari Vajpayee returned in 1998, after Congress withdrew support from the two United Front governments that followed his.

From which country did India borrow its Directive Principles, the non-binding social goals it sets for the state?

Ireland's Directive Principles of Social Policy appealed to India's framers, who saw the Irish Home Rule struggle as a mirror of their own; India's version covers social justice, welfare and foreign policy, and no court can enforce it.

Which provision, the remedy Ambedkar ranked above all others, lets a citizen go straight to the Supreme Court?

Article 32 makes the right to a remedy a fundamental right in itself; Ambedkar, who drafted it, said that without it the Constitution 'would be a nullity'. Every other fundamental right leans on it for enforcement.

Which state, drawn on linguistic lines, was formed in 1953 after Potti Sriramulu died on a hunger strike?

Andhra State was conceded by Nehru after Sriramulu's death set off riots; the precedent led to the Fazal Ali commission and the 1956 redrawing of states on linguistic lines.

What share of Lok Sabha and state assembly seats does the 2023 Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam reserve for women?

One-third of directly elected seats are to go to women under new Articles 330A and 332A, but the quota takes effect only after a census and a redrawing of constituencies; the demand goes back to the Constituent Assembly in 1946.

Who served as acting Prime Minister twice, after prime ministers died in office in 1964 and 1966?

Gulzarilal Nanda twice stood in as Prime Minister, yet he died owning no house of his own.

Which community lost its two nominated Lok Sabha seats, filled since 1952, when the 104th Amendment took effect in 2020?

Anglo-Indians owed the two seats to Frank Anthony, head of the All India Anglo-Indian Association, who secured them from Nehru.

Who won the 1969 presidential election as an independent, beating the official Congress nominee in a runoff?

V. V. Giri, a former trade union leader backed by the Communists and by the prime minister against her own party's candidate, won 420,077 votes to 405,427 after a campaign that pitted her against the Congress 'Syndicate' bosses.

Which President was elected unopposed in 1977 after 36 of the 37 nominations filed were rejected?

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy had lost the 1969 contest as the official Congress candidate; eight years later the electoral college of MPs and state legislators never had to vote. The sitting President had died that February.

Which Prime Minister resigned on 20 August 1979 after 23 days, the only one never to face Parliament?

Charan Singh took office with Congress support, which was withdrawn before he could seek a confidence vote; a champion of farmers, he had shaped Uttar Pradesh's abolition of zamindari landlordism.

Which 2017 ruling saw nine judges declare privacy a fundamental right, overruling eight- and six-judge precedents?

The Puttaswamy case was brought by a retired judge challenging the Aadhaar identity scheme; the bench was enlarged to nine because verdicts of eight and six judges had held there was no such right. It rests on Articles 14, 19 and 21.

Which President, amid a rift with Rajiv Gandhi, sat on the 1986 Post Office bill in a 'pocket veto'?

Giani Zail Singh neither signed nor returned the bill, so the government could not force his hand, and the mail-interception bill never became law.

Which classical-liberal party, founded by C. Rajagopalachari in 1959, was the largest opposition in the 1967 Lok Sabha?

The Swatantra Party was a reaction to what its founder saw as Nehru's increasingly socialist, statist Congress; it ended in 1974, after his death in 1972.

Who became India's first Chief Justice when the Supreme Court opened in January 1950, dying in office the next year?

Harilal Kania had already headed the Federal Court since 1947 and read the oath of office to Rajendra Prasad, India's first President; he sat in the 5–1 majority that upheld preventive detention in the A. K. Gopalan case of 1950.

Who was the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha, having presided over the Central Legislative Assembly before independence?

G. V. Mavalankar co-founded the Ahmedabad Education Society, which helped set up Gujarat University, and was elected Speaker on 15 May 1952 as the member for Ahmedabad.

Which anonymous way to fund political parties did a five-judge Supreme Court bench strike down on 15 February 2024?

Electoral bonds' buyers had to be named: the court ordered the State Bank of India to hand donor details to the Election Commission to publish.

Which 1985 ruling won a divorced Muslim woman from Indore maintenance, only for Parliament to dilute it in 1986?

The Shah Bano case ended with the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986, which limited maintenance to the 90-day iddat period; her husband had divorced her by triple talaq.

Which Chief Election Commissioner of 1990 to 1996 introduced photo identity cards for voters?

T. N. Seshan also posted election officials from outside the state going to the polls and banned liquor handouts, unlicensed loudspeakers and campaigning in places of worship; he was the 10th holder of the office.

Which former diplomat, a daughter of Jagjivan Ram, became the first woman Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 2009?

Meira Kumar quit the Indian Foreign Service in 1985 to enter politics, winning a by-election in Bijnor that year; she was the 15th Speaker, serving the full 2009–14 term.

Which President, the first Muslim to hold the office, became in 1969 the first to die in office?

Zakir Husain was among the Aligarh students and teachers who broke away in 1920 to found Jamia Millia Islamia, free of government influence; his tomb lies on its Delhi campus.