Culture and was the editor until his death. He was the leading spirit in organizing several scientific societies, such as the National Academy of Science (1930), the Indian Physical Society (1934), Indian Institute of Science (1935). He was the Director at Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science during 1953–1956. The Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, founded in 1943 in Kolkata, is named after him. To actively participate in the planning of education, industrialization, health, and river valley development, Saha stood as a candidate in the constituency of North-West Calcutta in the 1951 Loksabha election. He ran on the ticket of Union of Socialists and Progressives but Saha always maintained his independence. He was pitted against a powerful and well-funded candidate from Congress, Mr. Prabhu Dayal Himatsingka. Saha was not well funded for his campaign and wrote to his publisher in November 1951 to ask for a Rs 5,000 advance against the sale of his textbook, Treatise on Heat, "because I am standing for election in the house of the people from NW Calcutta". Saha won the contest by a margin of 16%. Saha actively participated in the parliament in the areas of Education, Refugee and Rehabilitation, Atomic Energy, Multipurpose River Projects and Flood Control and long term planning. In the book "Meghnad Saha in Parliament" Saha is described as "Never unduly critical, Saha was so forthright, so incisive, so thorough in pointing out lapses that the treasury bench was constantly on the defensive. This is brought out by the way he was accused of leaving his laboratory and straying into a territory not his own. But the reason why he was slowly drifting towards this public role (he was never a politician in the correct sense of the term) was the gradually widening gulf between his dream and the reality—between his vision of an industrialised India and the Government implementation of the plan." Saha was the chief architect of river planning in India and prepared the original plan for the Damodar Valley Project. His own observation with respect to his transition into government projects and political affairs is as follows: Death Saha died on 16 February 1956 of a cardiac arrest in New Delhi. He was on his way to the office of the Planning Commission in Rashtrapati Bhavan, when he collapsed a few yards away from there. He died on the way to hospital, at 10:15 a.m. (IST).