 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
The Election Commission of India held indirect fifth presidential elections of India on 16 August 1969. Varahagiri Venkata Giri with 420,077 votes won in a runoff election over his rival Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy who got 405,427 votes. [1]
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
The Election Commission of India held indirect fifth presidential elections of India on 16 August 1969. Varahagiri Venkata Giri with 420,077 votes won in a runoff election over his rival Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy who got 405,427 votes. [1]
The election schedule was announced by the Election Commission of India on 14 July 1969. [2]
| S.No. | Poll Event | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Last Date for filing nomination | 24 July 1969 | |
| 2. | Date for Scrutiny of nomination | 26 July 1969 | |
| 3. | Last Date for Withdrawal of nomination | 29 July 1969 | |
| 4. | Date of Poll | 16 August 1969 | |
| 5. | Date of Counting | 20 August 1969 | |
Source: Web archive of Election Commission of India website [3] [4]
| Candidate | Electoral Values (Initial Count) | Electoral Values (Runoff) |
|---|---|---|
| Varahagiri Venkata Giri | 401,515 | 420,077 |
| Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy | 313,548 | 405,427 |
| Chintaman Dwarkanath Deshmukh | 112,769 | Eliminated |
| Chandradatt Senani | 5,814 | |
| Gurcharan Kaur | 940 | |
| Rajabhoj Pandurang Nathuji | 831 | |
| Babu Lal Mag | 576 | |
| Chowdhry Hari Ram | 125 | |
| Manovihari Aniruddh Sharma | 125 | |
| Khubi Ram | 94 | |
| Bhagmal | — | |
| Krishna Kumar Chatterjee | — | |
| Santosh Singh Kachhwaha | — | |
| Ramdular Tripathi Chakor | — | |
| Ramanlal Purushottam Vyas | — | |
| Total | 836,337 | 825,504 |
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi fielded Giri as her candidate against the official Congress candidate Reddy. Giri won a majority of the votes in 11 of India's 17 state legislatures although the Congress Party was in power in 12. Being a trade union leader, Giri's campaign also had the backing of the Communists and other leftist parties. Massive defections within the Congress party resulted in Reddy winning only 268 first preference votes despite the Congress Parliamentary Party having a strength of 431. [5] Following this incident, Congress president S. Nijalingappa expelled Indira Gandhi from the Congress party for indiscipline, & Gandhi retaliated by forming her breakaway faction - Congress (Requisitionists).
The Congress Parliamentary Board met on July 11, 1969, to discuss the presidential candidate. The Syndicate had already decided on nominating Sanjiva Reddy, whose affinity to them was well known. Mrs Gandhi was naturally loath to do so. At the meeting, she suggested nominating the veteran dalit leader, Jagjivan Ram. When this was shot down, she asked that they postpone a decision to allow more time for arriving at a consensus. Nijalingappa, however, forced a vote in the six-member Parliamentary Board. Mrs Gandhi was outvoted four to two.
Even as a brooding Indira Gandhi left for Bangalore, a fresh opening presented itself. The Vice-President V V Giri announced that he would contest the presidential elections as an independent candidate. Mrs Gandhi knew that before she could support Giri against her own party's nominee, she would have to regain the initiative within the party. This she did first by forcing Morarji Desai out of the Cabinet and then by nationalizing banks. She also went ahead and filed the nomination for Sanjiva Reddy, though she refrained from issuing a whip to Congress MPs.
The Syndicate realized that Mrs Gandhi might yet come out in support of Giri. Nijalingappa took a fatal misstep by approaching the main opposition parties, Swatantra and Jana Sangh, to cast their second preference vote for Reddy (the opposition's candidate was C D Deshmukh). Mrs Gandhi seized the opportunity to denounce Nijalingappa's move. Yet, she did not formally reveal her preference until the night before the elections, when she called on her party to 'vote according to conscience'.
V V Giri won the poll by a narrow margin. The voting figures showed that a majority of Congress members had actually voted for Reddy. Giri had edged through with a minority of Congress votes and support from a curious combination of opposition groups. [6]
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was an Indian politician and stateswoman who served as the 3rd prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. She was India's first and, to date, only female prime minister, and a central figure in Indian politics as the leader of the Indian National Congress (INC). She was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, and the mother of Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded her in office as the country's sixth prime minister. Gandhi's cumulative tenure of 15 years and 350 days makes her the second-longest-serving Indian prime minister after her father. Henry Kissinger described her as an "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her tough personality.
The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party or simply the Congress, is a political party in India with deep roots in most regions of India. Founded on 28 December 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa. From the late 19th century, and especially after 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement. The Congress led India to independence from the United Kingdom, and significantly influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire.
Varahagiri Venkata Giri was an Indian politician and activist who served as the fourth president of India from 24 August 1969 to 24 August 1974. He also served as the third vice president of India from 13 May 1967 to 3 May 1969. He was the first president to be elected as an independent candidate. He was succeeded by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed as president in 1974. After the end of his full term, Giri was honoured by the Government of India with the Bharat Ratna in 1975. Giri died on 24 June 1980.
The Janata Party is an unrecognized political party in India. It was founded as an amalgam of Indian political parties opposed to the Emergency that was imposed between 1975 and 1977 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian National Congress. In the 1977 general election, the party defeated the Congress and Janata leader Morarji Desai became the first non-Congress prime minister in independent modern India's history.
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was an Indian politician who served as the sixth president of India, serving from 1977 to 1982. Beginning a long political career with the Indian National Congress Party in the independence movement, he went on to hold several key offices in independent India – as Deputy Chief minister of Andhra state and the first chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, a two-time Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a Union Minister— before becoming the Indian president.
The Indian National Congress (Organisation) also known as Congress (O) or Syndicate/Old Congress was a political party in India formed when the Congress party split following the expulsion of Indira Gandhi.
The Emergency in India was a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared across the country by citing internal and external threats to the country.
Basappa Danappa Jatti was the fifth vice president of India, serving from 1974 to 1979. He was the acting president of India from 11 February to 25 July 1977. He also served as the chief minister of Karnataka. Jatti rose from a being a Municipality member to India's second-highest office during a five-decade-long chequered political career.
Yashwantrao Balwantrao Chavan was an Indian freedom fighter and politician who served as 8th Minister of Finance from 1970 to 1971 & 1971 to 1974. He served as the last Chief Minister of Bombay State and the first of Maharashtra after latter was created by the division of Bombay state. His last significant ministerial post was as the Deputy Prime Minister of India in the short lived Charan Singh government in 1979.
Events in the year 1969 in the Republic of India.
The Indian National Congress was established when 72 representatives from all over the country met at Bombay in 1885. Prominent delegates included Dadabhai Naoroji, Surendranath Banerjee, Badruddin Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta, W. C. Banerjee, S. Ramaswami Mudaliar, S. Subramania Iyer, and Romesh Chunder Dutt. The Englishman Allan Octavian Hume, a former British civil servant, was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress.
Meira Kumar is an Indian politician and former diplomat. A member of the Indian National Congress, she was the Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment from 2004 to 2009, the Minister of Water Resources for a brief period in 2009. She served as the 15th Speaker of Lok Sabha from 2009 to 2014, being the first woman to hold the post. Kumar became just the second woman to be nominated for president of India by a major political block when she secured the United Progressive Alliance's nomination in 2017.
The Lok Sabha is the lower house in the Parliament of India. The 6th Lok Sabha, which ran from 23 March 1977 to 22 August 1979 was elected in February and March 1977. 11 sitting members from Rajya Sabha were elected to 6th Lok Sabha after the 1971 Indian general election.
Siddavanahalli Nijalingappa was an Indian Congress Party politician, lawyer, and Indian independence activist. He was the fourth Chief Minister of Mysore State, serving two terms. In addition to the Indian independence movement, he played an important role in the Karnataka Unification movement.
Veerendra Basappa Patil was a senior Indian politician and was twice, the Chief Minister of Karnataka. He became Chief Minister for the first time from 1968–1971 and the second time was almost 18 years later, from 1989–1990.
General elections were held in India between 1 and 10 March 1971 to elect members of the fifth Lok Sabha. They were the fifth general elections since independence in 1947. The 27 Indian states and union territories were represented by 518 constituencies, each with a single seat. Under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, the Indian National Congress (R) led a campaign which focused on reducing poverty and won a landslide victory, overcoming a split in the party and regaining many of the seats lost in the previous election.
Indian National Congress (Requisitionists) was created in 1969; it was created and led by Indira Gandhi. The then unified Indian National Congress was split, with the other part being Indian National Congress (O).
The State of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain was a 1975 case heard by the Allahabad High Court that found the Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractices. The ruling on the case that had been filed by the defeated opposition candidate, Raj Narain, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha invalidated Gandhi's win and barred her from holding elected office for six years. The decision caused a political crisis in India that led to the imposition of a state of emergency by Gandhi's government from 1975 to 1977.
Kesab Chandra Gogoi was an Indian politician who was the Chief Minister of the state of Assam for two months in 1982. For most of his political career, he was a member of Indian National Congress. He was a finance minister in the Assam state cabinet twice and a member of the Assam Legislative Assembly from Dibrugarh constituency.
The First Indira Gandhi ministry was formed on 24 January 1966 under the premiership of Indira Gandhi who was elected as the Prime Minister of India by the Congress Parliamentary Party to succeed Gulzarilal Nanda who was serving as the acting prime minister since 11 January 1966 following the untimely demise of Lal Bahadur Shastri. The cabinet remained in office until the 1967 general election in which Indira Gandhi was re-elected to office.
