Representative image of a person casting vote.
Credit: PTI Photo
India's largest state in terms of area, Rajasthan, is all set to go for Assembly polls on November 25. Both BJP and Congress have campaigned aggressively in the state and gone all out to woo their respective vote banks.
Today, Rajasthan is known as, more or less, a swing state, with the throne shuffling between BJP and Congress after every election.
However, this was not the case when the state went for Assembly polls for the first time in 1952. Back then, the Congress party used to be at the centre of Rajasthan politics. The state Assembly had 160 constituencies in 1952.
In this article, we take a look at the results of the first-ever Assembly polls held in Rajasthan.
The Indian National Congress had a clean sweep and won 82 seats with 12,86,953 votes or 39.46 per cent of the vote share in the 1952 polls. The grand old party chose Hiralal Shastri as the first chief minister of Rajasthan.
Ranking second was Akhil Bharatiya Ram Rajya Parishad, with 24 seats and a vote share of 12.26 per cent.
The Bharatiya Jana Sangh - which is known as Bharatiya Janata Party today - bagged 8 seats in the Assembly with 5.93 per cent vote share.
Meanwhile, Independents were the show stealers in this election as they had clinched 35 seats with a vote share of 27.49 per cent.
However, things are different in Rajasthan in 2023. Considered a BJP stronghold, the upcoming polls is a litmus test for the Ashok Gehlot-led incumbent Congress government in Rajasthan.
With an array of sops declared by both BJP and Congress for the voters, it remains to be seen which way will Rajasthan swing this time.
The results will be declared on December 3.
(With inputs from ECI and Rajasthan Assembly official website)