Muslims of India played a critical role in the latest Indian elections. Their smart vote prevented the Hindu nationalist party of Janata Bahrty from gaining a sweeping victory in North India. Despite the absence of a unified Muslim leadership to Muslims of India, Muslim masses with its smartness and spontaneous actions have decided to vote to any secular candidate in their districts to ensure the defeat of the extremist nationalist Hindu party. This is how the number of winners from small parties have increased. Among these parties is Sama Jewada in Ottar Bradish. Muslims of India are still outraged of the Congress Party because of sympathy of the Congress Government and its role in destroying Albabry Mosque in 1992. Muslims of India have also taught the Congress Party another lesson in 1977 as a result of actions taken against Muslims under the Marshall laws.
Officially, Muslims of India are estimated at 11.5% according to the 1991 census out of one billion Indian people. However, their real and accurate composition is way more than this figure. There are 202 election districts out of 544 districts Muslims can make a difference, and this is an enough percentage to influence the Indian elections. There are 115 districts were Muslim population is more that 15% of the population, 69 other districts were Muslim population is more that 20%, and 45 districts where the Muslim population is between 26-97%. There are also 15 districts where Muslim vote ranges from 40-97%, 54 other districts Muslim can win election by using there vote wisely, and 133 districts Muslims can make any candidate win. Accordingly, Muslims representation in the Parliament is supposed to be 70 seats, however Muslims won only 31 seats in this election and the highest seat won was in 1980 when Muslims of India won 44 seats, in other words Muslims are underrepresented.
Underrepresenation of Muslims in India is a result of many factors. For instance national parties usually is not generous in nominating Muslim candidates, and anti-Muslim parties use a wide range of tactics to divide Muslims vote such as bribing weak candidates to run against other Muslim who have a chance to win, therefore, dividing the vote, while the voted of Hindu remains united leading to their triumph. These tactics were used mainly by the Bahrtya Janat party where its' candidates won the elections in districts were Muslims vote is more that 30%. Furthermore, the Indian Government has followed a policy of "Gerrymandering", and redistricting to the districts were Muslims are majority, which led also to dividing the Muslim vote. Also many districts where Muslims represent the majority were reserved for women candidates and "untouchables" meaning dividing Muslim vote as well as preventing Muslims from wining more seats in these districts taking also into account that Muslim women generally speaking do not involve in politics that much. The following table shows Muslim representation in the Indian Parliament since 1995.

Year	Number of Members of the Parliament
1952	22
1957	26
1962	23
1967	30
1971	30
1977	32
1980	44
1984	42
1989	32
1990	27
1996	24
1997	30
1999	31