Indian general election, 1951

← 1945

25 October 1951 to 21 February 1952

1957 →

All 489 seats in the Lok Sabha
245 seats were needed for a majority

	First party	Second party

Leader	Jawaharlal Nehru	Shripad Amrit Dange
Party	INC	CPI
Leader's seat	Phulpur	Bombay City North
Seats won	364	16
Popular vote	47,665,875	3,484,401
Percentage	44.99%	3.29%

Prime Minister before election

Jawaharlal Nehru
INC

Subsequent Prime Minister

Jawaharlal Nehru
INC

The Indian general election of 1951–52 elected the first Lok Sabha since India became independent in August 1947. Until this point, the Indian Constituent Assembly had served as an interim legislature. See the 'Durations' section below to find the time-range associated with these elections.

The Indian National Congress (INC) won a landslide victory, winning 364 of the 489 seats and 45% of the total votes polled. This was over four times as many votes as the second-largest party. Jawaharlal Nehru became the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the country. In the first Lok Sabha polls held in 1951, India had around 173 million voters, out of an overall population of about 360 million. Voter turnout was 45.7%.

Before Independent India went to the polls, two former cabinet colleagues of Nehru established separate political parties to challenge the INC's supremacy. While Shyama Prasad Mookerjee went on to found the Jana Sangh in October 1951, Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar revived the Scheduled Castes Federation (which was later named the Republican Party). Other parties which started coming to the forefront included the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Parishad, whose prime mover was Acharya Kripalani; the Socialist Party, which had Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan's leadership to boast of; and the Communist Party of India. However, these smaller parties were unable to make an electoral stand against the Indian National Congress.

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