More than 17,000 candidates contested on behalf of nearly seventy-five political parties to fill 489 seats in the Lok Sabha and 3,283 seats in the state assemblies. The Congress won an absolute majority at the centre and in eighteen out of the twenty-two states; in the remaining four states (Madras, Travancore-Cochin, PEPSU and Orissa) it was the largest single party. (Akbar 1988; p.464)
