Maharaja Umaid Singh died in June,1947 and was succeeded by his twenty four year old elder son, Hanwant Singh.On the fifteenth of August the British departed and India became free. Like the other Princely States, Marwar-Jodhpur acceded to the Dominion of India on the three areas of Defense, Communications and Foreign Affairs. In all other respects Maharaja Hanwant Singh remained the sovereign ruler of Marwar.
This changed in 1949 when the Government of India in New Delhi chose to dishonour the Instruments of Accession and moved to merge the Princely States with the Dominion. The Merger of Marwar took place on 30 March 1949. On that day the desert kingdom merged with the other Princely States of Rajputana to form the new Indian state of Rajasthan. Individual Covenants with the rulers allowed them privy purses and a few privileges but they surrendered all their powers.
Three years later, in January, 1952, Maharaja Hanwant Singh died in a plane crash as he flew from constituency to constituency on the vote counting day of the Indian Republic's first General Elections. That night, as they brought his body back to his stunned capital, the results were announced. Of the thirty five Rajasthan State Legislative Assembly seats that made up the former kingdom of Marwar Hanwant Singh's candidates had emerged victorious in thirty one. Of the four parliamentary seats, his candidates won all.
The Maharaja had himself won both a State Assembly and Parliamentary seat, both from Jodhpur. The man he defeated in Jodhpur, Jai Narayan Vyas, fought a by-election a few months later from outside Marwar and was elected the Chief Minister of Rajasthan. An early indication of the convoluted path Indian politics was about to take.
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