General elections were held in India between 25 October 1951 and 21 February 1952, the first national elections after India gained independence in 1947.[1][2][3] Voters elected 489 members of the first Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India. Elections to most of the state legislatures were held simultaneously.[4] It was the first Indian election with full universal franchise.
The elections were conducted under the provisions of the constitution adopted on 26 November 1949. After the adoption of the constitution, the Constituent Assembly continued to act as the interim parliament, while an interim cabinet was headed by Jawaharlal Nehru. An Election Commission was created in 1949 and in March 1950 Sukumar Sen was appointed as the first Chief Election Commissioner. A month later parliament passed the Representation of the People Act which set out how the elections for parliament and state legislatures would be conducted.[5] The 489 elected seats of the Lok Sabha were allotted across 401 constituencies in 25 states. There were 314 constituencies electing one member using the first-past-the-post system. 86 constituencies elected two members, one from the general category and one from Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes. There was one constituency with three elected representatives.[6] The multi-seat constituencies were created as reserved seats for backward sections of society, and were abolished in the 1960s. The constitution at this time also provided for two Anglo-Indian members to be nominated by the President of India.
A total of 1,949 candidates competed for 489 elected seats in the Lok Sabha. Each candidate was allotted a different coloured ballot box at the polling booth, on which the candidate's name and symbol were written. 16,500 clerks were appointed on a contract of six months to type and collate the electorate rolls and 380,000 reams of paper were used for printing the rolls.[7] A total of 173,212,343 voters were registered (excluding Jammu and Kashmir) out of a population of 361,088,090 according to the 1951 census, making it the largest election conducted at the time. All Indian citizens over the age of 21 were eligible to vote.
Due to the harsh climate and challenging logistics, the election was held in 68 phases.[8] A total of 196,084 polling booths were set up, of which 27,527 booths were reserved for women. The majority of voting took place in early 1952, but Himachal Pradesh voted in 1951 as its weather was commonly inclement in February and March, with heavy snow impending free movement.[9] The remainder of states voted in February–March 1952, except for Jammu & Kashmir, where no voting took place for Lok Sabha seats until 1967. The first votes of the election were cast in the tehsil (district) of Chini in Himachal Pradesh.[10]
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The result was a landslide victory for the Indian National Congress (INC), which received 45% of the vote and won 364 of the 489 elected seats. The second-placed Socialist Party received only 11% of the vote and won twelve seats. Jawaharlal Nehru became the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the country.
Contesting parties
A total of 53 parties and 533 independents contested the 489 seats.[11]
Several ministers resigned from their posts and formed their own parties to contest the elections. Syama Prasad Mukherjee established the Jana Sangh in October 1951 and Law Minister B. R. Ambedkar revived the Scheduled Castes Federation (which was later named the Republican Party). Congress party president Purushottam Das Tandon resigned from his post because of differences with Nehru.[12][13]
Results
Template:Election resultsTemplate:Notelist
Results by state
| State | Total seats |
Seats won | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INC | CPI | SPI | KMPP | GP | BJS | RRP | SCF | KLP | Others | Ind. | App. | |||
| style="background:Template:Party color;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;;" | | style="background:Template:Party color;;" | | |||
| Andaman and Nicobar Islands | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||||
| Assam | 13 | 11 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||
| Ajmer | 2 | 2 | ||||||||||||
| Bhopal | 2 | 2 | ||||||||||||
| Bihar | 55 | 45 | 3 | 6 | 1 | |||||||||
| Bilaspur | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||||
| Bombay | 45 | 40 | 1 | 1 | 3 | |||||||||
| Coorg | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||||
| Delhi | 4 | 3 | 1 | |||||||||||
| Himachal Pradesh | 3 | 3 | ||||||||||||
| Hyderabad | 25 | 14 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| Jammu and Kashmir | 6 | 6 | ||||||||||||
| Kutch | 2 | 2 | ||||||||||||
| Madhya Bharat | 11 | 9 | 2 | |||||||||||
| Madhya Pradesh | 29 | 27 | 2 | |||||||||||
| Madras | 75 | 35 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 9 | 15 | |||||||
| Manipur | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||||
| Mysore | 11 | 10 | 1 | |||||||||||
| Orissa | 20 | 11 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 1 | ||||||||
| PEPSU | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | ||||||||||
| Punjab | 18 | 16 | 2 | |||||||||||
| Rajasthan | 20 | 9 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 6 | ||||||||
| Saurashtra | 6 | 6 | ||||||||||||
| Travancore–Cochin | 12 | 6 | 2 | 4 | ||||||||||
| Tripura | 2 | 2 | ||||||||||||
| Uttar Pradesh | 86 | 81 | 2 | 1 | 2 | |||||||||
| Vindhya Pradesh | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||
| West Bengal | 34 | 21 | 5 | 2 | 3 | |||||||||
| Anglo-Indians | 2 | 2 | ||||||||||||
| Total | 499 | 364 | 16 | 12 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 29 | 37 | 10 |
| Source: ECI | ||||||||||||||
Assam
Bihar
Bombay
Madhya Pradesh
Madras
Orissa
Punjab
Uttar Pradesh
West Bengal
Hyderabad
Madhya Bharat
Mysore
Patiala and East Punjab States Union
Rajasthan
Saurashtra
Travancore Cochin
Ajmer
Bhopal
Bislaspur
Bilaspur constituency was uncontested
Coorg
Delhi
Himachal Pradesh
Kutch
Manipur
Tripura
Vindhya Pradesh
Government formation
The speaker of the first Lok Sabha was Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar. The first Lok Sabha also witnessed 677 sittings (3,784 hours), the highest recorded count of the number of sitting hours. The Lok Sabha lasted its full term from 17 April 1952 until 4 April 1957.
Notable losses
First Law Minister B. R. Ambedkar was defeated in the Bombay (North Central)[14] constituency as Scheduled Castes Federation candidate by his little-known former assistant and Congress Candidate Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar, who polled 138,137 votes compared to Ambedkar's 123,576 votes.[10]Template:Rp Ambedkar then entered the parliament as a Rajya Sabha member. He contested a by-poll from Bhandara in 1954 in another attempt to enter the Lok Sabha, but again lost, standing third behind PSP winner Ashok Mehta & Congress runner-up B. N. Arjun.
Acharya Kripalani lost from Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh as a KMPP candidate, but his wife Sucheta Kripalani defeated the Congress candidate Manmohini Sahgal in New Delhi.[15]
See also
References
- ↑ How India pulled off its first general election. The Indian Express(12 April 2024).
- ↑ Lok Sabha polls 2024 to have longest voting period since first general elections. The Times of India(16 March 2024). Retrieved 17 March 2024.
- ↑ Voting Period Of 2024 Lok Sabha Polls Longest Since First General Elections. Retrieved 17 March 2024.
- ↑ Elections that shaped India | The first general elections: a free country in full bloom. The Hindu(28 March 2024).
- ↑ India after Gandhi: the history of the world's largest democracy{{#if:Guha|, Guha}. Picador India(2022). ISBN 978-93-82616-97-9
- ↑ General Election of India 1951, List of Successful Candidate. Election Commission of India. Retrieved 12 January 2010.
- ↑ This Is How The First General Elections Were Held in Independent India, Pareek, Shabdita. ScoopWhoop(2016-01-25). Retrieved 2018-12-21.
- ↑ Interesting Facts About India's First General Elections. indiatimes.com(2014-04-28). Retrieved 2018-12-21.
- ↑ India's first voter in Himachal Pradesh Template:Webarchive, by Gautam Dhmeer, in the Deccan Herald; published 30 October 2012; retrieved 7 April 2014
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Harper Collins(2008). ISBN 978-0-06-095858-9
- ↑ First general elections in India: All you need to know. India Today(10 February 2016). Retrieved 2018-12-21.
- ↑ Party Politics in India{{#if:Weiner|, Weiner}. Princeton University Press(8 December 2015). ISBN 978-1-4008-7841-3
- ↑ Varshney, Ashutosh. 28 March 2015. "Faults and lines Template:Webarchive." The Indian Express. Retrieved on 16 June 2020.
- ↑ (reserved seat)(4 May 2014). Retrieved 26 January 2016.
- ↑ Patronage as Politics in South Asia{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Cambridge University Press(2014). ISBN 978-1-107-05608-4
Further reading
- Guha, Ramachandra. "Democracy's Biggest Gamble", World Policy Journal, (Spring 2002) 19#1 pp. 95–103