Question

Explain any two challenges faced by the Election Commission at the time of the first general elections.

Hint:

Think of the huge electorate, the huge number of polling arrangements, and the faulty electoral rolls in which many women names were missing.

Answer 1

Step 1: Understand the question:
India held its first general elections in 1951-52 under the Election Commission headed by Sukumar Sen, the first Chief Election Commissioner. The work was on a scale never tried before in a new democracy.
We write any two challenges, each in a short paragraph for 1 mark each.

Step 2: Challenge 1: Huge size of the exercise:
There were about 17 crore eligible voters. They had to elect nearly 3,200 members of state assemblies and 489 members of the Lok Sabha.
Lakhs of polling staff, thousands of polling booths and a large number of ballot boxes were needed. The land was vast with hard terrain.

Step 3: Challenge 2: Preparing the electoral rolls and voters who could not read:
Electoral rolls had to be made from scratch. Many women gave their names only as wife of or daughter of, so lakhs of names were wrongly recorded, and the Commission ordered corrections.
A large part of the population was illiterate, so each party got a symbol and polling used separate boxes for each candidate.

Final Answer:
Two challenges were the very large scale of arrangements for about 17 crore voters, and preparing correct electoral rolls for a mostly illiterate population.