4/9/24, 4:32 PM The Unsung Organiser of India's First Election, Sukumar Sen

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The Unsung SECURITY
Organiser of
India's First LAW
Election,
SCIENCE
Sukumar Sen
S.Y. Quraishi SOCIETY
5
CULTURE
17/Feb/2022 min
read

Despite having a largely illiterate population and

witnessing continuing refugee inflow, and amidst
global political turmoil, India organised a mammoth
democratic exercise in 1951-52.
Latest
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Delhi HC Reje
Arvind Kejriw
The Wire Staff1 m

TECH
An Anonymou
Coder Nearly…
Sigi Goode5 mins
Sukumar Sen. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
POLITICS
State Funding,
Independent India’s first elections were held from Recall and Mo
October 25, 1951 to February 21, 1952. To Raghavan Sriniva

commemorate that monumental exercise, The Wire is LABOUR

publishing a series of articles exploring various Migrant Work
aspects of the first ever general election in Struggle to Be
independent India. Read it here. Shreehari Paliath

GOVERNMENT
Democracy in India is a source of immense national A Flagship
pride, and a cornerstone of the identity of this Programme in
country. It did not, however, have a smooth start. Hakim Singh3 min
Immeasurable struggle and the indomitable will of
India’s nation builders and people combined to make

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4/9/24, 4:32 PM The Unsung Organiser of India's First Election, Sukumar Sen

the second most populous country the largest SPORT

democracy in the world. POLITICS Search news
P.T. Usha Says
Rebel Olympic
ECONOMY
TheWefoundation
need yourof support
all democracies is free and independent.
to keep journalism fair KNOW The
MOREWire Staff1 m
WORLD
elections. The first Indian elections were held from
SECURITY
October 25, 1951 to February 21, 1952, with an
astronomical 173,212,343 registered voters of whom
LAW
105,950,083 exercised their newly acquired voting
SCIENCE of India, which
right. The geographical vastness
even today poses a formidable
SOCIETYchallenge, was
deemed insurmountable in the 1950s by most
observers and experts. CULTURE

Interestingly, the backdrop of the 1952 elections was

as much a strategic consideration as it was a
political one. While India became independent in
1947, it remained a dominion. A British governor
general remained at the head of the Indian political
system, greater in stature than the prime minister.
As the Constitution, promulgated on November 26,
1949, came into effect on January 26, 1950, Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was anxious to get the
elections underway as soon as possible. Democracy
and the establishment of the will of the people were
the main premises on which the struggle for
independence was waged, and without elections that
premise would remain unfulfilled. The man this
mammoth task was entrusted to was Sukumar Sen,
an unsung hero of Indian democracy.

Sen, an ICS officer, was the chief secretary of West

Bengal when he was called to be the first chief
election commissioner of India. A month after he
was appointed in March 1950, the Representation of
the People Act was passed in Parliament, which
provided the framework for the elections, mainly the
electoral rolls. A year later, the Representation of
the People Act, 1951 was passed dealing with all the
remaining matters about the conduct of elections. It
is not clear why the two Acts were given the same
name.

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4/9/24, 4:32 PM The Unsung Organiser of India's First Election, Sukumar Sen

It was decided that the electoral process would be

started as early as 1951. ItPOLITICS
was mandated that any Search news
Indian citizen 21 years orECONOMY
above of age residing in a
particular
We needconstituency
your support fortomore
keepthan 180 daysindependent.
journalism KNOW MORE
WORLD
would be eligible to vote from that constituency.
SECURITY
It is significant that poor and backward as India
LAW
was, it still gave its people, men and women, an
SCIENCE
equal vote, while it took the so-called greatest
democracy, the US, 144 years and the UK 100 years
SOCIETY
to give equal voting rights to women.
CULTURE
In a country with a massive illiteracy (84%) with
key identification documents missing from lakhs of
residents due to the turmoil of the Partition, this was
perhaps a significant challenge. But at the same
time, the step was a befitting homage to the ideals
of democracy and representation that had fuelled an
independence struggle spanning over half a century.
In the heralded democracies of the West, such as the
US or the UK, elections are held with two or at best
three competing political parties. In India, however,
the first elections saw 53 registered political parties
(including 14 national parties) competing for 489
seats for the Lower House of Parliament.

At the time of independence, there were 17

provinces of British India which were reorganised
into states, and then there were princely states, 565
of them, dotting the country. These had to be
reconfigured into the existing provinces, which
ultimately led to 14 new states and six union
territories which formed independent India. This
reorganisation was the first challenge the
Constituent Assembly Secretariat (CAS), the body
in charge of preparing the electoral rolls, faced,
before the Election Commission of India was created
and took over the task.

The second challenge it faced was the aftermath of

Partition riots, refugees and rehabilitation. The
Bengal and Punjab borders were virtually porous,
with refugees coming in almost every day

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4/9/24, 4:32 PM The Unsung Organiser of India's First Election, Sukumar Sen

throughout the later months of 1947 and even after.

POLITICS amongst both
There was widespread confusion Search news
administrators and the masses
ECONOMYregarding where
exactly
We the
needinternational
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to keepbetween India
journalism and
independent. KNOW MORE
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Pakistan were. It was in the midst of this confusion
that the CAS undertook the SECURITY
task of preparing the
first electoral rolls for registering 173 million first-
LAW
time voters two years before the Election
SCIENCE This made the
Commission came into existence.
formidable task of Sukumar Sen easier.
SOCIETY
CULTURE is the foresight of
Not to be missed in this exercise
the bureaucracy of the Constituent Assembly
Secretariat led by B.N. Rau, the Constitutional
Adviser (CA), to start advance action. The other
staff members who were directly and continuously
involved in the work of the preparation of the
electoral rolls, in what came to be known as the
Franchise Section, were the joint secretary, S.N.
Mukerjee and under secretaries, K.V. Padmanabhan
and P.S. Subramaniam who joined in late 1948 and
then took over from Rau. Interestingly, as Ornit
Shani observes, the CAS made the Indians voters
before they even became citizens.

A voter during the first elections in India scans symbols before

casting a ballot. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Election Commission of India (ECI) was

created as an independent autonomous
constitutional body. While introducing draft Article
289 (which later became Article 324 in the final
Constitution) on June 15, 1949, in the Constituent

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4/9/24, 4:32 PM The Unsung Organiser of India's First Election, Sukumar Sen

Assembly, B.R. Ambedkar, the chairman of the

POLITICSthe rationale for an
Drafting Committee, explained Search news
independent central and ECONOMY
federal Election
Commission. Thus,support
We need your an independent Election independent.
to keep journalism KNOW MORE
WORLD
Commission was constituted which was vested with
SECURITYand control of
the superintendence, direction
preparing electoral rolls and the conduct of elections
LAW
to Parliament as well as state legislatures and to the
SCIENCE
offices of the president and vice president of India.
SOCIETY
The first elections of 1952 under Sukumar Sen were
pivotal, because they set CULTURE
the standard for all
subsequent elections. Sen started from scratch.
There was no staff, permanent or temporary, no
infrastructure, no training facilities, no institutional
memory, as a large number of the staff who had
conducted the 1944 assembly elections had either
migrated or were killed in the riots. Sen started with
a clean slate.

Of the 489 parliamentary constituencies, 314 were

single seat constituencies, 172 were double seat
constituencies (including one general category
candidate and one SC or ST candidate) and three
were triple seat constituencies (containing one
candidate of each category). A total of 1874
candidates, including 533 independents, contested.

Ballot papers were printed at the Govt Security

Press, Nasik. A whopping 1,96,084 polling stations
were set up, of which 27,527 were exclusively for
women voters. Each candidate was allotted a
coloured box with his name and symbol painted on
it. The turnout was 45.7%, which was considered
quite decent under the prevailing circumstances.
However, as much as 80.5% voter turnout was
recorded in Kottayam district in Kerala, a testament
to the enthusiasm of the Indian people to exercise
their franchise.

These elections proved to be a benchmark for future

endeavours, taking care of every minute detail to
make the election a success.

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4/9/24, 4:32 PM The Unsung Organiser of India's First Election, Sukumar Sen

Transport to the remotest parts of the country was

POLITICS including camels
arranged by any means available, Search news
and elephants. Ballot sheets, ballot boxes and
ECONOMY
indelible
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were designed and allotted to make things easier for
SECURITY
the mostly illiterate voters. Attention to detail was
given regarding every possible factor, including the
LAW
weather. In certain tehsils like Chini in what is now
Himachal Pradesh, localsSCIENCE
went to polls earlier than
the rest of the country asSOCIETY
the winter snow would
make the passes leading to the tehsil impassable. In
village Kalpa in KinnaurCULTURE
valley, a young man called
Shyam Saran Negi became the first known voter to
cast his vote. He hasn’t missed a single election ever
since and is now, as the oldest living voter, a media
celebrity.

Interestingly, the polls were held in 68 phases.

What makes the first Indian elections even more

extraordinary in context is the international
situation at the time. When India was going to polls
in late 1951, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in
neighbouring Pakistan had just been assassinated,
pushing the country towards the first of its many
military dictatorships. The government of South
Africa had just disenfranchised the Cape Coloured
people, the last non-white people who had had
voting rights in the country. Vietnam had plunged
into war against the French, and the prime minister
of Iran was assassinated. It was amidst this chaos of
war and violence that a fledgling nation fought to
establish and uphold its democratic values and its
promise to a colonised people who had fought for
decades to gain their independence.

Today, after over seven decades, the great Indian

election has become a global benchmark for free,
fair and credible elections. Although there have
been several electoral reforms during this period,
the most prominent of which is switching over from
the individual coloured ballot boxes, to ballot papers
and eventually the electronic voting machines,

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4/9/24, 4:32 PM The Unsung Organiser of India's First Election, Sukumar Sen

perhaps 80% of the system remains what its founder,

POLITICSIn absence of mass
Sen, had created from scratch. Search news
media exposure, he did his job also discreetly. He
ECONOMY
remains an unsung
We need hero oftoIndian
your support democracy.independent.
keep journalism KNOW MORE
WORLD
SECURITY
S.Y. Quraishi is the former Chief Election
Commissioner of India and the author of An
LAW
Undocumented Wonder: The Making of the Great
Indian Election. SCIENCE
SOCIETY
CULTURE
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