One Nation, One Election: How EC synchronised 1957 polls

The first general elections were held between October 1951 and May 1952, featuring a three-tiered process for the election of the President and Vice-President, members of the Lower Houses at the Centre and in the States, and the members of the Upper Houses. For the second general elections, the Election Commission (EC), after holding consultations, recommended the dissolution of the Assemblies of a handful of states so that the second general elections to the Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies could be held together.

On those first elections and how synchronicity was achieved for second general elections, the high-level committee on “One National, One Election”, which submitted its report to President Droupadi Murmu, quotes from the Report on the Second General Elections in India, 1957: “If the House of the People and the different State Legislative Assemblies were all allowed to complete their respective terms in full, the General elections to reconstitute them would have had to be held at different points of time. In such a case, it would not have been possible to hold simultaneous country-wide general elections, both for the House of the People and the State Legislative Assemblies…. It was therefore, decided that the second general elections should be completed before the end of March, 1957, and that the existing Houses of Legislature should be dissolved prematurely, whenever necessary, in order that the newly elected Houses might meet soon after the general elections were over.”

As a result, the Assemblies of Bihar, Bombay, Madras, Mysore, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal were dissolved two to three months before their terms got over. “In order to dissolve the Houses, a consensual approach in consultation with