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Last updated 29 July 2026

Muslim MPs in the Lok Sabha

How many of the 543 seats in India's national parliament (Lok Sabha) are held by Muslim MPs, counted at every general election since 1952. At the community's 14.2% population share, parity would be 77 seats; the count peaked at 49 in 1980 and stands at 24 today.

24of 543 seats(2024)

vs population: -53 seats (parity 77)

Explore the interactive chart →

Bottom line

Muslims hold 24 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha elected in 2024, about 4.4%, against a 14.2% share of the population. If seats matched population there would be roughly 77 Muslim MPs. Representation in Parliament peaked in the 1980s and has drifted down since, even as the population share rose.

How to read the chart

The chart tracks the number, and share, of Muslim members of the Lok Sabha at each general election since 1952, against the population-parity mark of 77 seats. This card counts seats won, not votes cast or candidates fielded, so it measures outcomes, not effort.

Why it matters

Who sits in the legislature shapes which concerns reach the floor, which laws pass and how budgets are shared. Persistent under-representation of a seventh of the country means a large community's voice is thinner in the rooms where decisions are made.

Deeper analysis

Potential drivers

  • Dispersed population · Muslims are a minority almost everywhere and a majority in very few constituencies, so a first-past-the-post system rarely returns a Muslim member ↗ Ranganath Misra Commission, 2007.
  • Fewer candidates · Parties have fielded steadily fewer Muslim candidates over recent decades, narrowing the pool that can win ↗ Beg, The India Forum.
  • Polarisation · Where elections turn on community lines, Muslim candidates draw fewer cross-community votes, lowering their odds in mixed seats ↗ Beg, The India Forum.

Key levers

  • Candidate selection · The most direct lever sits with the parties, in how many Muslim candidates they field in winnable seats.
  • Voter participation · Complete electoral rolls and turnout efforts, the Election Commission's remit, ensure the community's votes are fully counted.
  • Local office · Representation in panchayats and municipalities builds the pipeline of candidates for higher office.
Key stakeholders

Badges link to an independent or registered credential where the organisation publishes one (Credibility Alliance, GiveIndia, 80G, FCRA). Many smaller NGOs do not take part in these registries, so a missing badge is not a mark against an organisation.

About this measurement

Definition. How many of the 543 seats in India's national parliament (Lok Sabha) are held by Muslim MPs, counted at every general election since 1952. At the community's 14.2% population share, parity would be 77 seats; the count peaked at 49 in 1980 and stands at 24 today.

Methodology. Religion is not tabulated by either ECI or PRS Legislative Research in their official candidate-profile publications. Underlying data is ECI candidate affidavits classified post-election by journalists and researchers. Figures cross-verified across multiple sources: Maktoob Media, FACTLY, The India Forum, Statista.

Documented as "manual entry" canonical with citations in each row's methodology note. The series covers all 18 general elections, 1952-2024: the 1952-2004 figures are from historical compilations (The India Forum, Statista), 2009 onward cross-verified across the sources above. The card displays the absolute number of Muslim MPs per house (user call, Commit FW: counts read more directly than shares); the percentage rides in the canonical data, where the denominator record carries each house's N-of-M seat count, and house sizes ranged from 489 (1952) to 543 (since 1996).

Representation peaked at 49 MPs (9%) in 1980 and has sat between 22 and 27 since 2014: 2009=28/543, 2014=22/543, 2019=27/543, 2024=24/543. At the Muslim population share of ~14.2%, parity in the current house would be 77 seats, a chronic shortfall of about 50 seats. The state-assembly layer of the same affidavit-classified sourcing is the separate "Muslim share of state assemblies" card (about 6% of seats across the 31 covered assemblies).

Sources. PRS / ECI affidavits. Download CSV: ls-share.csv.

Hand-compiled How to reproduce. These counts are hand-compiled from election-wise ECI candidate affidavits and cross-checked across multiple journalistic sources, since no single official source tabulates members by religion.

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