Elections over the years

General elections in India—the campaigning, the victories and defeats and the cold calculations.

1962: Nehru, T.T. Krishnamachari and K. Kamaraj leave the makeshift stage after Nehru addressed an election meeting at Tilak Ghat in Triplicane, Madras, in February.

1957: Nehru emerges from "Meghdoot", the Prime Minister's Ilyushin aircraft, after landing at the Wellingdon Island airstrip in Kochi, when he arrived for campaigning in Kerala in February.

1957: Nehru addressing an election meeting at Gurgaon (Punjab), where Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was the candidate. Azad won with 1,91,221 votes and a 66.68 per cent vote share.

1967: In Madras city, meeting people at their doorstep.

1967: Appealing to voters on the road on public address systems fitted on motor cars.

1967: Appealing to voters on the road on public address systems fitted on motor cars.

1962: In Madras city, posters banners and symbols of the Congress, the Swatantra Party, the DMK and the Tamil national parties make their presence felt as campaigning picks up closer to the polling date in February. Of the 41 seats in the State, the Congress won 31, the last time that it won 30 or more seats on its own in the State.

1962: A Swatantra Party advertisement in "The Hindu".

1967: Waiting to vote in the fourth general election in Madras.

1967: In Madras city, ballot boxes being taken from the sealed room where they were stored to a counting centre.

1967: At the election information centre in New Delhi. The Posts and Telegraphs Department opened similar centres in several cities in the country.

Congress leadership issue, March 1967: The political drama in New Delhi ended to everyone's satisfaction on March 11 after Congress president K. Kamaraj worked tirelessly to find common ground, and this resulted in Morarji Desai withdrawing his candidature and ending the need for an election. Indira Gandhi was subsequently re-elected leader at the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting.

Morarji Desai (second from left).

K. Kamaraj.

1971: Indira Gandhi acknowledging the greetings of partymen soon after her election as the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party on March 18. Also seen in the picture are Congress president Jagjivan Ram and K. Hanumanthaiah, the visionary and statesman from Karnataka.

1971: Indira Gandhi addressing an election rally at Bolpur, West Bengal.

1977: Indira Gandhi addressing an election meeting in Madurai on March 7. Seated behind her are AIADMK leader M.G. Ramachandran and to his left, G.K. Moopanar.

November 1977: Jayaprakash Narayan addressing a public meeting at Sitabdiara, his birthplace in Bihar.

May 1977: Morarji Desai, who took charge as Prime Minister in the Janata Party government two months earlier, arriving in Madras on a two-day tour.

1977: Voters queue up outside a polling booth in Lucknow on March 18 in the sixth general election.

Voters making their way to the polling booth in a constituency in Rajasthan.

1980: In New Delhi, Indira Gandhi addresses supporters after her election victory in January. The Congress won 353 out of 542 seats.

1980: Indira Gandhi arrives at Madras airport on January 18, four days after she was sworn in as Prime Minister for the fourth time.

1980: A victorious Indira Gandhi arrives in Thiruvananthapuram on January 17.

1984: Rajiv Gandhi after he was elected leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party in New Delhi on December 31.

1989: Rajiv Gandhi congratulates V.P. Singh after he was sworn in as Prime Minister in New Delhi on December 2.

1989: V. P. Singh is congratulated by N.T. Rama Rao on his election as leader of the National Front Parliamentary Party in New Delhi on December 1. Among the others in the picture are (from right) M. Karunanidhi and Devi Lal.

May 1, 1991: Rajiv Gandhi on his way to address an election meeting in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

May 19, 1991: AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa campaigning in Chennai.

April 1991: Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar addressing an election meeting at Rura village in Kanpur.

1991: Janata Dal leaders V.P. Singh and Ajit Singh (right) at an election meeting, at Mallaban in Hardoi district in Uttar Pradesh on April 8.

June 1991: Congress president P.V. Narasimha Rao (left) with Gujarat Chief Minister Chimanbhai Patel at an election meeting in Ahmedabad.

1991: BJP leader L.K. Advani amid supporters while campaigning in Baharaich, Lucknow, on May 15.

1996: Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav at an election rally at Ali Ganj in the Etah parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh on May 4.

1996: H.D. Deve Gowda (right) with Janata Dal president and Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad and the Janata Dal's S.R. Bommai after he was unanimously elected to the post of Prime Minister, on May 14.

1998: The newly elected Congress president Sonia Gandhi with Ajit Singh, president of the Bharatiya Kisan Kamgar Party, and her son Rahul Gandhi in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, to address an election rally on February 13 in support of the Congress-BKKP alliance candidate.

1998: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi campaigning in Chennai on February 3. The Senior party leaders with him include Union Minister for Industry Murasoli Maran (to Karunanidhi's left) and his son and City Mayor M.K. Stalin.

1998: Atal Bihari Vajpayee addressing an election meeting in Bhopal on November 20. Seated at left is Narendra Modi, then the BJP's general secretary in charge of Madhya Pradesh.

1999: Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, who defeated RJD chief Lalu Prasad, on his arrival at the Delhi airport on October 10.

2004: Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh and former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu make their way to the stage to address an election meeting in central Kolkata on May 4.

2009: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekara Reddy campaigning at Nandikotkur in Kurnool district on April 21.

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October 1952: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru during his tour of Rayalaseema. In the first Lok Sabha elections held in 1951-52, the Congress won 364 of the 489 seats with a 45 per cent vote share.