The extent of victory of the Congress in the general elections held during 1952-1962 was boosted artificially due to which one of the following electoral arrangement?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → First-past-the-post method
The extent of the Congress victory was artificially boosted by the first-past-the-post method: under it, the party that gets more votes than others tends to get much more than its proportional share of seats. In 1952 the Congress won 74 per cent of the seats with only 45 per cent of the votes, because the non-Congress votes were divided among many rival parties and candidates.
Option (1) Alternate voting system — Incorrect. Under an alternative (preferential) vote, voters rank the candidates, and if no one gets more than half the votes, the lowest candidates are dropped and their votes passed on until someone has a majority. It makes a winner need majority support, so it would have reduced, not inflated, the gains from a divided opposition. India used the simple rule that whoever gets the most votes in a constituency wins.
Option (3) Universal adult suffrage — Incorrect. It gave the right to vote to every adult citizen. It decides who may vote, not how votes are turned into seats, so it could not inflate the Congress’s share of seats.
Option (4) Mixed representation — Incorrect. A mixed system combines seats won in constituencies with seats given in proportion to votes; it would have brought seats closer to the vote share, the opposite of what happened. With 45 per cent of the votes, the Congress would have got nearer 45 per cent of the seats, not 74 per cent.
Note: The concepts in Options (1) and (4), ‘alternate voting system’ and ‘mixed representation’, are not in NCERT (2025-26); explained here for the benefit of the students.
NCERT (2025-26): “Congress dominance in the first three general elections … The extent of the victory of the Congress was artificially boosted by our electoral system. The Congress won three out of every four seats but it did not get even half of the votes. In 1952, for example, the Congress obtained 45 per cent of the total votes. But it managed to win 74 per cent of the seats. The Socialist Party, the second largest party in terms of votes, secured more than 10 per cent of the votes all over the country. But it could not even win three per cent of the seats. How did this happen? For this, you need to recall the discussion about the first-past-the-post method in your textbook, Indian Constitution at Work last year. In this system of election, that has been adopted in our country, the party that gets more votes than others tends to get much more than its proportional share. That is exactly what worked in favour of the Congress. If we add up the votes of all the non-Congress candidates it was more than the votes of the Congress. But the non-Congress votes were divided between different rival parties and candidates. So the Congress was still way ahead of the opposition and managed to win.” |