Era of One-Party Dominance Flashcards

A comprehensive collection of vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, organizations, and political concepts from Chapter 2: Era of One-Party Dominance.

Election Commission of India

The body set up in January 1950 to organize and conduct free and fair elections in India, headed by Sukumar Sen as its first Chief Election Commissioner.

Sukumar Sen

The first Chief Election Commissioner of India, appointed after the Election Commission was established in January 1950.

Universal Adult Franchise

The voting system giving every adult citizen the right to vote, introduced in India's 1952 general election despite wide criticism and skepticism regarding high illiteracy and poverty.

Electronic Voting Machine (EVM)

The electronic device used to record voters' preferences, introduced in the late 1990s and used across the entire country by 2004.

First-Past-The-Post System

The electoral system adopted in India where the candidate or party with more votes than any single competitor wins, resulting in seat shares higher than proportional vote shares.

Congress System

A term describing the first decade of Indian electoral competition where the Congress party acted as both the ruling party and the opposition through its internal factions.

Factions

Groups existing inside a political party based on ideological considerations or personal ambitions that compete and negotiate within the party framework.

Article 356

The constitutional provision empowering the Central Government to invoke emergency powers and take over state administration, used in 1959 to dismiss Kerala's CPI government.

Congress Socialist Party (CSP)

A group formed within the Congress in 1934 by young leaders seeking a more radical and egalitarian party, which later formed the separate Socialist Party in 1948.

Communist Party of India (CPI)

A party that emerged in the early 1920s inspired by the Bolshevik revolution, became the largest opposition party in 1952, and formed the first democratically elected Communist state government in Kerala in 1957.

Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS)

A political party formed in 1951 with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee as founder-President, emphasizing 'one country, one culture, one nation' and advocating Akhand Bharat.

Akhand Bharat

The ideological objective advocated by the Bharatiya Jana Sangh calling for the reunion of India and Pakistan into a single country.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

A scholar of Islam, freedom fighter, opponent of Partition, Constituent Assembly member, and Education Minister in the first cabinet of free India.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur

A Gandhian freedom fighter from the royal family of Kapurthala, Constituent Assembly member, and Minister for Health in independent India's first ministry till 1957.

Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly, founder of the Independent Labour Party and Scheduled Castes Federation, and Law Minister who resigned in 1951 over the Hindu Code Bill.

Rafi Ahmed Kidwai

Congress leader from U.P., Minister for Communications in the first cabinet of free India, and Food and Agriculture Minister from 1952 to 1954.

Acharya Narendra Dev

Freedom fighter, scholar of Buddhism, and founding President of the Congress Socialist Party who later led the Socialist Party and Praja Socialist Party.

Deen Dayal Upadhyaya

Full-time RSS worker, founder member, General Secretary, and later President of Bharatiya Jana Sangh who initiated the concept of integral humanism.

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee

Leader of Hindu Mahasabha and founder-President of Bharatiya Jana Sangh who served as Cabinet Minister before resigning in 1950 over differences regarding Pakistan.

E.M.S. Namboodiripad

Leader of the Communist legislature party who formed the ministry in Kerala in March 1957 as the Chief Minister of the first democratically elected Communist state government.