Spectrum: Summary of First General Election - History for UPSC CSE

The provisions of the Constitution relating to citizenship and Article 324 (the Election Commission) were brought into force on November 26, 1949, while the rest of the Constitution came into force on January 26, 1950. The next year, the government wanted to go in for general elections to constitute the House of the People—the Lok Sabha—as provided for in the Constitution.
The founding fathers of the Indian Constitution incorporated certain aspects of the electoral procedure in the Constitution itself (Part XV, Articles 324 to 329).

➢ The Election Commission

• The office of the Election Commission had been set up in a small way on January 25, 1950. The first Chief Election Commissioner of India was Sukumar Sen, an ICS officer, who assumed office on March 21, 1950.
• Under Article 324, the Election Commission of India has been vested with the power of the superintendence, direction and control of the entire process for conduct of elections to Parliament and legislature of every state and to the offices of President and Vice President of India. The Election Commission had to do a lot of ground work before the first polls were held.

➢ Legislation for Polls

• It was only after these laws were passed that the electoral machinery could be put in place. So, though the government was in a hurry to hold the elections as early as 1950 and then by the spring of 1951, the first phase of the elections could be held only from October 15, 1951.
• Of the 489 seats in the House of the People to be filled by election, 72 seats were reserved for candidates belonging to the Scheduled Castes, and 26 for candidates belonging to the Scheduled Tribes.
• The total number of seats in the Legislative Assemblies of the states was 3,283. Out of these, 477 seats were reserved for the Scheduled Castes, and 192 for the Scheduled Tribes.

• The elections were held based on universal adult franchise, with all those twenty-one years of age or older having the right to vote. The total number of voters enrolled in the whole of India (excluding Jammu and Kashmir) was 17, 32,13,635 (roughly more than 173 million). Of these, approximately 45 per cent were women voters. As much as 49 per cent of the total population was thus enrolled as voters.

➢ Challenges

• Most of the voters were poor, illiterate, and came from rural areas, and had no experience of elections. There was much scepticism about such an electorate being able to exercise its right to vote in a politically mature and responsible manner.
• The Election Commission faced many challenges. There was a house-to-house survey to register the voters. Many eligible voters could not be included in the electoral rolls despite much effort on the part of the Election Commission because of
  (i) Ignorance and apathy of the common voter,
  (ii) Lack of adequate organisation and experience on the part of the political parties, and
  (iii) Inexperience and poor organisation of the governmental machinery in some of the states.

➢ Parties in the Fray for the Lok Sabha

• There were 53 political parties participating in the first general elections for the Lok Sabha seats. These included the 14 national parties, according to the report by the Election Commission of India. Besides, there were the independents. There were a total number of 1,874 candidates, including 533 independents.

➢ Conduct of Elections

• In the first general elections of the nation, there were three types of constituencies: 314 with single seats, 86 with two seats and one with three seats. The total seats thus were 489 from 401 constituencies.
• There were over 224,000 polling booths, one for almost every 1000 voters, and these were equipped with over 2 million steel ballot-boxes, one box for every candidate. About a million officials supervised the conduct of the polls.
• The voter turnout for the elections was 45.7 per cent. The people demonstrated their ability to vote with knowledge even though the majority of them were illiterate. The number of invalid votes was as low as 3 to 4 per cent. The participation of women was significant with some 40 per cent of the eligible women voters exercising their vote.

➢ Lok Sabha

• The Indian National Congress contested 472 seats and won 364, a stupendous majority of the seats to the Lok Sabha. The CPI won 16 and the Socialist Party won 12 - the only other parties to get two-digit number of seats. The KMPP won 9 seats. The BJS won 3 seats. The independents got the highest number of seats after the Congress.
• The Congress polled close to 45 per cent of the total vote. The CPI got about 3.29 per cent votes. The Socialist Party got 10.59 per cent votes.

➢ State Leislatures

• In the state legislature elections, too, the Indian National Congress swept the polls. The party won 2,248 seats on the whole. It formed the government in all the states, though it did not get the majority on its own in four states, namely, Madras, Travancore-Cochin, Orissa and PEPSU.