In recent weeks, allegations of widespread voter fraud and voter-list discrepancies made by Rahul Gandhi, the leader of opposition parties in the Indian parliament, have rocked the Election Commission of India (ECI) — the constitutional body responsible for holding free and fair elections in India.

As allegations and counter-allegations from the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), two of the largest political parties in India, dominate both social media and mainstream news media, I have been thinking about the first general elections of India, and how the ECI, within a year of its formation, achieved the near-impossible feat of conducting independent India's first election. The first General Elections, held between 25 October 1951 and 21 February 1952, marked India's transition from a constitutional monarchy to an electoral democracy.

The Formation Of The ECI & The First Election Commissioner

Between 1947 and 1949, the Drafting Committee, under the leadership of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, put in rigorous hours to draft the Constitution of India which was ratified on November 26, 1949, and came into effect on January 26, 1950, outlining the rules and bylaws to conduct free and fair elections.

In March 1950, the Election Commission of India was established as a single member body led by Sukumar Sen, a mathematician and civil servant appointed as the first Chief Election Commissioner of India. During his tenure from 1950 to 1958, Sen oversaw the first General Elections of India in which 176 million Indians, among whom only 15 percent could read or write, elected 489 members of the first Lok Sabha, the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of India.

The Process: 1.7 Million Voters, 53 Political Parties, 1,949 Candidates, 489 Seats

It was a Herculean exercise in which a sixth of the world's population was going to vote, making it the largest election conducted in the world at the time. Aided by two Regional Election Commissioners and one Chief Election Officer for each state, Sen set out by first identifying and registering each voter ensuring all eligible voters — Indians above the age of 21 — could exercise their right to universal adult suffrage.

Using the 1951 census data, they designated parliamentary constituencies and also designed the party symbols, ballot papers, and ballot boxes for the already massive population of the country — including the vast majority of Indians who could not read or right at the time. The first general election of India was a historical event for many reasons, and one of them was how accessible it was for the largely illiterate electorate.

The ECI ensured their right to vote by designing distinctive party symbols which also served as visual aid to voters who could not read. In the end, a total of 173,212,343 voters were registered and 45.7% of the eligible voters cast their votes in 196,084 polling booths, of which 27,527 booths were reserved for women. Congress, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, won 364 seats with 44.99% of votes cast.

The Lessons Of The First General Election

Today, as the Election Commission of India battles allegations of partisanship and widespread voter-list discrepancies, duplicate voters, deletions, and questions over its conduct in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, in both the Supreme Court and the court of public opinion, it's imperative that we look back at the commission's beginnings.

In the 1950s, Sukumar Sen and the first electoral officers of India went to great lengths to establish the credibility of the Election Commission of India. Their efforts ensured that democratic equality was achieved from the very beginning through immediate, universal adult suffrage, avoiding the prolonged and often violent struggles seen in other countries.

For India to maintain its democratic integrity and ensure that citizens trust the electoral process, it is not only crucial that elections are free, fair, and transparent but also that the electorate sees them as such. Recent allegations regarding the conduct of the Election Commission may turn out to be unfounded political attacks after all, but the responsibility to reassure voters that their right to vote is protected lies solely with the Election Commission.

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