The final results for 542 Lok Sabha constituencies have been declared. The Bharatiya Janata Party with 303 elected members has retained its position as the single largest party in the house.

We take a quick look at the profile of the newly elected 17th Lok Sabha. Here are some key highlights.

BJP has the highest representation

  • 397 MPs were elected from national parties.  Of these 303 MPs were from BJP, 52 from Congress, and 22 from TMC.
  • Among the state parties, DMK (23) and YSRCP (22) won the most seats.

300 first-term MPs in the 17th Lok Sabha

  • 300 MPs will be in Lok Sabha for their first-term.  From the outgoing Lok Sabha, 197 MPs were re-elected.  Further, 45 have been members of earlier Lok Sabhas.
  • This distribution is not very different from the last general election.

Fewer MPs over 70 years, more MPs under 40 years

  • The average age of an MP is 54 years.
  • The 17th Lok Sabha has 12% of MPs below the age 40 years. This is more than that of the 16th Lok Sabha which had 8% of MPs below the age of 40 years.
  • This bucks the longer term trend of Lok Sabha getting older. The proportion of MPs below 40 years of age has steadily declined from 26% in the first Lok Sabha.
  • On average, women MPs are 6 years younger compared to male MPs in the 17th Lok Sabha.

394 MPs have at least graduate level education

  • In the 17th Lok Sabha, 27% of MPs have studied till 12th class.  In comparison, 16th Lok Sabha had 20% MPs who had studied till 12th class.
  • Since 1996, at least 75% of representatives of each Lok Sabha have been graduates.

78 women MPs in the 17th Lok Sabha

  • 716 women candidates contested the General Election. Out of which, 78 women MPs have been elected to the 17th Lok Sabha. In 2014, 62 women MPs were elected.
  • The representation of women MPs in Lok Sabha is slowly improving from 5% in the 1st Lok Sabha to 14% in the 17th Lok Sabha.
  • Though the percentage of women MPs has increased over the years, it is still lower in comparison to some countries. These include  Rwanda (61%), South Africa (43%), UK (32%), USA (24%), Bangladesh (21%).   

Most MPs have declared political and social work as their occupation

  • 39% of MPs have listed their occupation as political and social work.
  • 38% are engaged in agricultural activities. 23% of MPs are businessmen. Only 4% of MPs are lawyers.
  • Several MPs have declared more than one occupation. 

This article was originally published on the PRS Legislative Research website.