Conduct of Elections

In the first general elections of the nation, there were three types of constituencies: 314 with single seats, 86 with two seats and one with three seats. The total seats thus were 489 from 401 constituencies.

There were over 224,000 polling booths, one for almost every 1000 voters, and these were equipped with over

2 million steel ballot-boxes, one box for every candidate. About a million officials supervised the conduct of the polls. Indelible ink was introduced as a precautionary step:

a mark was put on the voter’s finger as he/she went in to vote so as to prevent impersonation. (The practice continues to this day.)

The first-past-the-post system was the mode, so of the many candidates, whoever got the plurality or the largest number of votes would be elected; the winning candidate did not need to have a majority.

The voter turnout for the elections was 45.7 per cent. The people demonstrated their ability to vote with knowledge even though the majority of them were illiterate. The number of invalid votes was as low as 3 to 4 per cent. The participation of women was significant with some 40 per cent of the eligible women voters exercising their vote.