The Decline of Congress in Uttar Pradesh

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CHALLENGE TO CONGRESS DOMINANCE: FROM 1967 to 1977

In 1967 elections, the Congress party’s performance dipped ever further. The steady decline that the party saw over the past three elections continued to haunt them and this time it challenged the party’s supremacy in the state. The Congress could only win 199 seats in the state assembly elections and for the first time their seat share from Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha dropped below 50. The Congress won 48 seats from Uttar Pradesh. There were many reasons behind this bad performance. To begin with, the death of Jawahar Lal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri, two of the biggest Congress figures of that time had a major part to play in their decline. Moreover, both of them belonged to Uttar Pradesh and with them gone, the party had an internal crisis with both Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi wanting to become the Prime Minister. The other causes for Congress’ poor performance in 1967 included the failure of the monsoons in 1965 and 1966 and the subsequent hardship throughout northern and eastern India. It was also due to the currency devaluation in 1966 which was quite unpopular.

In the state, Congress was able to gain a bare majority in the State Assembly but Charan Singh who was one of the most popular leaders of the state decided to leave the Congress with his supporters. He formed another party called the Bhartiya Kranti Dal in 1967. In 1967, Charan Singh became the Chief Minister of the state through the help of the opposition parties. However, Charan Singh became the successor to C. B. Gupta who was the Chief Minister for a brief one-month period. Charan Singh, an open critic of Jawahar Lal Nehru’s Soviet Union like policies with the help of Raj Narain and Ram Manohar Lohia, ...

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...ld throughout the country by trade and students unions. These agitations were being led by Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai.

After the high court’s verdict, Indira Gandhi decided to challenge it in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the High court’s decision to take away Indira Gandhi’s Member of Parliament privileges and deemed her election unlawful. However, she was permitted to continue as India’s Prime Minister. Jayaprakash Narayan organised a rally in Delhi the very next day. His statements during the rally were considered a sign of provoking revolutionary sentiments across the country by Indira Gandhi. On the same day of the rally, Indira Gandhi made President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declare a state of emergency throughout the country. This marked the starting of what continues to be one of the most controversial time periods in Indian politics.

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