Era of One-Party Dominance — Notes

Election Commission: created in January 1950; first Chief Election Commissioner Sukumar Sen.

The challenge: universal adult franchise for about 17 crore adults in a poor, mostly non-literate society. Tasks included preparing electoral rolls, drawing constituencies and training lakhs of polling staff. Polling ran from October 1951 into early 1952.

Method: a symbol for each candidate and a separate box per candidate (first two elections); later a single ballot paper with all names and symbols; electronic voting machines from the late 1990s, used across the country by 2004.

Result: peaceful polls; the losers accepted the outcome; the Congress won a big majority and Jawaharlal Nehru remained Prime Minister. The election showed that adult franchise could work in a poor country.

1957 and 1962: the Congress again won roughly three-quarters of Lok Sabha seats.

Kerala, 1957: the Communist Party of India won the assembly election; E. M. S. Namboodiripad became Chief Minister. A communist party coming to power through a free vote was rare in the world. After protests against its reforms, the Centre dismissed the government in 1959 under Article 356, which started a lasting debate on the use of President's Rule.

In the first-past-the-post system the candidate with the most votes in a constituency wins, even without 50 per cent.

The Congress was present in every constituency, while the opposition was divided among several parties. So it won most seats with less than half of the votes.

Imagined illustration (Sonpradesh): P has 37.2% of the votes but 80% of the seats; R has 28% of the votes and no seat.

Dominant party, not one party: opposition parties were legal and elections free.

Why the Congress dominated:

• Legacy of the national movement and well-known leaders.
• Organisation spread across the country before the first election.
• Social coalition: support from many classes, castes, religions and regions.
• Ideological coalition: left, right and centre inside one party; policies usually in the middle.
• Tolerance of factions: groups competed inside the party, acting as an internal check and reducing exits.
• A divided opposition.

Socialist Party: from the Congress Socialist Party (1934); separate from 1948 when the Congress stopped allowing organised groups with their own constitutions; democratic socialism; later split into several parties.

Communist Party of India: communist groups active from the 1920s; Marxism-Leninism; largest opposition group in the first Lok Sabha; won Kerala in 1957; split in 1964 (the CPI(M) was formed).

Bharatiya Jana Sangh: founded 1951; founder-president Syama Prasad Mukherjee; stressed national and cultural unity and Hindi as the official language; limited seats, support mainly in parts of the north.

Swatantra Party: founded 1959 after the Congress Nagpur resolution (land ceilings, state trading in food grains, cooperative farming); leaders included C. Rajagopalachari; wanted less state control and free enterprise.

Though they won few seats, opposition parties:

• questioned the government and kept it accountable;
• kept alternative programmes alive;
• gave unhappy citizens a democratic outlet, so discontent did not turn against democracy;
• trained leaders for later decades.

Relations were often respectful; the first cabinet after independence was broad-based and included non-Congress figures such as B. R. Ambedkar and Syama Prasad Mukherjee.