FIRST GENERAL ELECTION

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 125, 11 March 1950, Page 5

FIRST GENERAL ELECTION

PLANS IN INDIA MILLIONS WILL QUALIFY TO VOTE (Reuter Correspondent) NEW DELHI. India will hold her first General Election under the constitution of the new republic next winter by universal adult suffrage of Indian men and women over 21. This means that India’s masses, hitherto politically inarticulate, wil go to the polls for the first time. Of a total of 350,000,000 inhabitants, it is officially estimated that 160 million will qualify to vote.

Since the existing Parliament was elected as a Constituent Assembly before independence had been achieved or partition had taken place, the political scene has completely changed. The Constituent Assembly was elected when no issue other than national independence really counted. To-day India is a sovereign democratic republic faced with many complex political and economic problems, which could produce deep divisions among an electorate which has no linguistic, racial, religious, social, or economic unity. Even the unity which Congress displayed in its struggle to gain independence has lost its main reason for existence.

Yet, among those best placed t<s judge, there is surprising unanimity .that Republican India’s first real parliament will be superficially very like the present one in its, composition. As an organised political machine, the Congress Party has no serious rival. The Indian Socialist Party,, which is mainly drawn from what used to be the Left Wing of Congress, is gathering forces in the industrial towns, but few Indians think it will be in a position seriously to challenge Congress if the elections are held before the end of next year.

Congress, Programme

Moreover, Congress can go to the country secure in the achievement of its historic aim of national independence. Its membership includes all great names of the period of heroic struggle—the President (though he is constitutionally debarred from party politics), the Prime Minister, whom Mahatma Gandhi himself nominated as his political heir, and the Deputj 7 - Premier, Sardar Patel—by common consent the strong man of India, and the ablest political organiser in the land.

The Congress programme for the coming elections, as outlined by Patel, will be to promote the quickest and most efficient possible fulfilment of the Government’s policy of all-round development. It will concentrate its effort in'the remotest country districts as -well as In centres of existing political activity. In other words, the Congress Party will act as the spearhead of the reforms inherent in the new constitution.

In the name 'of Ghandi, it will appeal to the people to work their hardest to consolidate the gains won under his guidance. Emphasis will be on the need to sacrifice petty and parochial interests to the wider national cause of building a strong and united India. -