Historian Ramachandra Guha

writes of Sukumar Sen in 2002:on India's first general election in 1952 has historian 's take on the first CEC:Nehru's haste [in wanting India's first general election] was understandable, but it was viewed with some alarm by the man who had to make the election possible, a man who is an unsung hero of Indian democracy. It is a pity we know so little about Sukumar Sen. He left no memoirs and, it appears, no papers either. .... It was perhaps the mathematician in Sen, which made him ask the prime minister to wait.

No officer of State, certainly no Indian official, has ever had such a stupendous task placed in front of him. Consider, first of all, the size of the electorate: 176 million Indians aged 21 or more, of whom about 85 per cent could not read or write. Each voter had to be identified, named and registered. This registration of voters was merely the first step. For how did one design party symbols, ballot papers and ballot boxes for a mostly unlettered electorate? Then, polling stations had to be built and properly spaced out, and honest and efficient polling officers recruited. Voting has to be as transparent as possible, to allow for the fair play of the multiplicity of parties that would contest.

Moreover, with the general election would take place elections to the State Assemblies. Working with Sukumar Sen in this regard were the election commissioners of the different provinces, also I.C.S. men. Tinker and Walker write that Sukumar Sen was aided by two Regional Election Commissioners plus one Chief Election Officer for each state.
The ability of India's first political leaders to refrain from interfering with the machinery, as well as their decision to retain the Indian Civil Service (renaming it to the Indian Administrative Service and making some cosmetic changes) gave Sen and his colleagues the freedom to adapt the machinery used by the British in the first Indian elections for the purposes of a general election.

Sen was the first Vice-ChancellorThough not always successful, Nehru took it upon himself to shield the higher bureaucracy against any arbitrary interference and allowed it to operate autonomously. This approach paid handsome dividends. Sukumar Sen and his colleagues in the IAS developed and adapted the election machinery inherited from the British Empire in India in preparation for elections on the basis of universal adult franchise. With their positions secure and their political master sufficiently enlightened to understand when to stop engaging in politics, a hierarchy of IAS officers employed at the central, provincial, and district levels in coordination with the police and village watchmen administered the largest exercises in the history of electoral democracy. The autonomy and integrity of the IAS was a crucial element in motivating opposition parties to participate in the elections and thus contributed to the credibility of the democratic exercise.