Spectrum Test: First General Elections - UPSC MCQ

• With the Constitution coming into force in 1950, India no longer had a dominion status and could sever any remaining links with Britain; it was a sovereign democratic republic. 

• The Constitution's provisions 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 provided in the Constitution.

• The Election Commission's office 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. 

• Although the Constitution provides for the appointment of other Election Commission members as and when necessary, for long after India became a republic the commission was a single-member one.

• The Election Commission of India is a per constitutional body, established following the Constitution. It has been made independent of the government of the day. 

• 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 the offices of President Vice-President of India. 

• The Election Commission had to do a lot of groundwork before the first polls were held.

• Parliament passed two major measures provided the detailed law under which elections were held. 

• The first of these measures was the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which provided for the qualifications of voters and matters connected with the preparation and publication of electoral rolls. 

• It also allocated the number of seats in the House of the People to the several states and fixed the number of seats in each state legislature. 

• The second legislation was the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which laid down other provisions relating to qualifications and disqualifications of members, the conduct of elections, poll expenses, the poll itself, counting of votes, etc.

• 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. The total population of India (excluding Jammu and Kashmir) according to the 1951 census was 35,66,91,760. As much as 49 per cent of the total population was thus enrolled as voters.

• Though it was generally accepted that the Congress had the largest following, various other political strands in India were also beginning to take shape. 

• Before the first elections, Shyama Prasad Mookeree (industries minister under Nehru) broke away to set up the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (a proto-BJP) in October 1951. Dr B. R. Ambedkar revived the Scheduled Castes Federation (which was later named the Republican Party). 

• Another high-profile Congress leader, J. B. (Acharya) Kripalani, founded the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party. Ram Manohar Lohia and Jaya Prakash Narayan, were the forces behind the Socialist Party. And the communists (then united), having just abandoned an armed struggle in Telangana, too contested.

• 53 political parties were 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 independents. There were a total number of 1,874 candidates, including 533 independents.

1. 1 Only.

Statement 1 is correct. The first-past-the-post (FPTP) system is a voting system in which voters cast a ballot for their preferred candidate, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. Under the FPTP system, only the candidate with the most votes is elected, regardless of whether they receive a majority of the votes or not. This system is used in many countries around the world, including India.

Statement 2 is not correct. Under the FPTP system, the winning candidate does not need to have a majority of the votes. In fact, it is possible for a candidate to win an election with less than 50% of the votes if the other candidates are split between multiple candidates. In this case, the candidate who receives the most votes, even if it is less than 50% of the total votes, would be declared the winner.

• The Indian National Congress contested 472 seats and won 364, a stupendous majority of the Lok Sabha seats. 

• The CPI won 16, and the Socialist Party won 12 – the only other parties to get a 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.