The 16th Lok Sabha will see the highest number of first-time MPs in over 30 years. However, family connections remain an important entry point into politics, this time around too.
Data compiled by the independent, non-partisan legislative research group, PRS Legislative Research, shows that 315 of the 543 new MPs - or 58% - are first-timers. This is the highest that the number of debutants has been since the 1980 election (329) and the 1977 post-Emergency election (376).
Among parties, the AIADMK leads the pack with 92 per cent of its MPs being first-timers, followed by the Shiv Sena (67 per cent), BJD (60 per cent), BJP (59 per cent) and Trinamool Congress (56 per cent). The Congress is at the bottom, with just a nine, or a fifth of its MPs, being new to Parliament.
Forty of these first-timers are women, who are at a historic high in the 16th Lok Sabha, The Hindu found. Among all first-time MPs, 12 are under the age of 30 and another 48 are between 31 and 40 years old.
For his book ‘India: A Portrait’, the writer Patrick French compiled biographical information on all of the 543 MPs in the 15th Lok Sabha and found that all MPs under the age of 30 had in effect inherited their seats, and more than two-thirds f the MPs under the age of 40.
For the 16th Lok Sabha, The Hindu found that the number of MPs under the age of 30 grew substantially from six to 12. However, the number of young, first-time MPs who are relatives of politicians is still high; nine of these 12 have family connections, including TMC leader Mamata Banerjee’s nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav’s nephew Akshay Yadav. The list of MPs under the age of 30 with family connections includes those from the BJP, Shiv Sena, AIADMK, TDP, INLD and YSR Congress Party.
Of the MPs aged between 31 and 40, at least another 20 are the sons and daughters of politicians, The Hindu found.
Of the 226 MPs who have been elected to Parliament before, three won for the ninth time – P A Sangma of the National People’s Party (Meghalaya), Ram Vilas Paswan of the LJP (Bihar) and Kaml Nath of the Congress (Madhya Pradesh). Four won for the eighth time, including Sumitra Mahajan of the BJP, the woman with the most legislative experience in the 16th Lok Sabha.
171 MPs were re-elected from the 15th to the 16th Lok Sabhas. Nearly half of these returning MPs are from the BJP alone, while 31 Congress MPs are returning.
To compile the data, PRS Legislative Research considered MPs elected this time but who had never been Lok Sabha MPs in the past; MPs who had been Rajya Sabha MPs before were also included.
