Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru constitutes the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. The Parliament of India is the supreme legislative body of the Republic of India. The Parliament is composed of the President of India and the houses. It is bicameral with two houses: the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the People).

The first ever elections were held for 489 seats. The total number of eligible voters were about 17.3 crores. The Indian National Congress (INC) won 364. Only two other parties won double digit seats. The CPI with 16 seats and the Socialist Party with 12 seats.  The Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), the previous avatar of the BJP won only 3 seats. Independents won the second highest number of seats in Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru was elected the Prime Minister.

Popularly known as Dadasaheb, Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar, the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha was born on November 27, 1888.

The first International film festival in the country was planned as a six-week mobile film fair organised by the Films Division of the Government of India. The festival after two weeks would travel to Madras, Delhi, and Calcutta spending one week in each of the cities. The first venue was Bombay. Jawaharlal Nehru who was unable to make it for the inaugural ceremony in Bombay sent an official message.

Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav bagged India's first individual Olympic Bronze Medal in 1952. He is best known as a wrestler who won a bronze medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He was one of the first athletes from India to win a medal in the Olympics. After Norman Pritchard who won two silver medals in athletics in 1900, Khashaba was the first individual athlete from India to win a medal at the Olympics.