With a month-and-a-half to go for the results of the Lok Sabha polls to be announced on June 4, the BJP has already won its first seat. On Monday, a day after the nomination of the Congress candidate from Surat was rejected, the BJP’s Mukesh Dalal was declared elected uncontested from the Lok Sabha seat, after the eight remaining nominees withdrew.
It is uncommon for a Lok Sabha candidate to be elected unopposed – Dalal is only the 29th MP since 1952, when the first elections were held, to have won uncontested, including through bypolls. The most MPs elected unopposed in a single election were in 1952, 1957, and 1967, at five each.
Since 1952, J&K has seen the most MPs elected unopposed at four. Only eight states have sent more than one legislator to Parliament uncontested, including Andhra PradeshAssam, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telanganaand Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress has seen the most MPs get elected unopposed at 20. The National Conference (NC) and Samajwadi Party (SP) follow with two each. Just one Independent has won the parliamentary election unopposed. Dalal is the first BJP MP in this list.
Only two Lok Sabha seats have seen an MP elected unopposed more than once – Sikkim and Srinagar.
Among the notable MPs who were elected unopposed are former Deputy Prime Minister and Maharashtra CM Y B Chavan from Nasik; former J&K CM and NC chief Farooq Abdullah from Srinagar; former Nagaland CM and ex-Governor of four states S C Jamir; Odisha’s first CM Harekrushna Mahatab from Angul; former member of the Constituent Assembly and Congress leader T T Krishnamachari from Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchendur; and former Union Ministers P M Sayeed from Lakshadweep and K L Rao from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
At the start were some royals
In the first election of 1952, Anand Chand became the first and only Independent candidate to be elected unopposed. Chand was the 44th ruler of the erstwhile kingdom and later princely state of Bilaspurwhich at the time had its own Lok Sabha seat and is now a part of Himachal Pradesh.
While the Congress had put up a candidate against Chand, he later withdrew his nomination reportedly owing to a lack of funding and to avoid competing with the king amid accusations from the Congress that Chand had bribed its candidate. The grand old party even challenged the uncontested election, but a district court ruled in favour of Chand.
In 1962, Harekrushna Mahatab, the first CM of Odisha, was elected unopposed from the state’s Angul constituency. The absence of any rival candidates was a surprise at the time given that he contested a seat where the Ganatantra Parishad (GP) was a dominant regional party. The GP initially named a candidate, who dropped out sensing the competition against Mahatab would be too stiff, and the party’s eventual candidate too withdrew his nomination, leaving just Mahatab in the fray.
In the same year, Manabendra Shah was elected unopposed as a Congress candidate from the Tehri Garhwal seat, now in Uttarakhand. Shah was the last ruler of the erstwhile Garhwal kingdom, which was among the first princely states to sign the Instrument of Accession to join the Indian Union in 1949. Starting in 1957, Shah represented the seat a record eight times and lost just once in 1971. After winning with 79% of the vote share in 1957, his popularity in the constituency was followed by an uncontested victory in 1962. Shah later served as the Indian ambassador to Ireland in the 1980s.
In 1967, Ngawang Lobzang Thupstan Chognor won the Ladakh seat unopposed as a Congress candidate. Chognor, better known as the 19th Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, a Buddhist spiritual leader considered an incarnation of Buddha, won Ladakh again in 1971 and later served as the Indian ambassador to Mongolia from 1990 to 2000.
In 1977, the Sikkim and Arunachal West seats elected their MPs unopposed. In Sikkim, though Chhatra Bahadur Chhetri had seven rival candidates, their nomination papers were deemed invalid during scrutiny. In Arunachal West, Rinchin Khandu Khrime was the only candidate to file nomination.
Sikkim sent another MP to the Lok Sabha after an uncontested win in a 1985 bypoll, when Dil Kumari Bhandari became the state’s first woman representative in the Lower House. The bypoll was necessitated by her husband and sitting MP Nar Bahadur Bhandari and his Sikkim Sangram Parishad’s win in the state Assembly polls. After Nar Bahadur became the CM, he vacated the Lok Sabha seat. Dil Kumari was among nine candidates, including from the Congress and Independents, to replace him. But, at the last minute, the eight withdrew their nominations and she was elected unopposed.
In 1989, amid the rising insurgency in the Kashmir valley, the Lok Sabha elections for its three seats saw a record-low turnout and one MP elected unopposed. While Baramulla and Anantnag saw a turnout of just 5%, the National Conference’s Mohammed Shafi Bhat won from Srinagar uncontested in an election that the government struggled to hold given the growing militancy.
The last such win
Samajwadi Party leader Dimple Yadav was the most recent MP to be elected unopposed before Dalal. In 2012, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav was forced to vacate his Kannauj Lok Sabha seat after his party won the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and he became the CM.
In the ensuing bypoll, the SP named his wife Dimple as its candidate. While some major parties, including the Congress, BSP and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), stayed away from the bypoll, the BJP, several Independents and minor parties showed an interest to contest from Kannauj.
Before polling though, an Independent and a candidate from the Sanyukta Samajwadi Dal withdrew their nominations, with Dimple expected to win in a seat that had been an SP stronghold since 1998.
Later, the BJP and Peace Party accused the SP of preventing their candidates from filing their nominations. The SP, however, said the BJP had asked its candidate to withdraw.
