The 1952 Madras Legislative Assembly election was held for nine days from 2 January to 25 January 1952, and the votes were counted on 27 March 1952 to elect all 375 members of the Legislative Assembly of Madras State (present-day Tamil Nadu). They were the first elections held in the state following Indian independence. Although voting was held in 1952, the Election Commission of India officially designated it as taking place in 1951.
No party won an outright majority in the election, though the Indian National Congress (INC) emerged as the largest party with 152 seats and more than a third of the vote. The Communist Party of India (CPI) came in second with 62 seats, followed by the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP) with 35 seats. Outgoing chief minister P. S. Kumaraswamy Raja lost the election from the Srivilliputhur Constituency. C. Rajagopalachari of the INC was elected chief minister as a consensus candidate.
This was the only election for Madras State where it still encompassed the Telugu-speaking areas of what is present-day Andhra Pradesh, as it split off to form Andhra State in 1953. The separation consolidated the non-Brahmin INC faction led by K. Kamaraj. Opposition to his education policy led to Rajagopalachari's resignation in 1954 and Kamaraj was elected chief minister in his stead.
Background
Factionalism in Congress In the years after the 1946 election, factionalism was common place in the Congress party in Madras. During 1946–51, three different Congress chief ministers headed the Madras government. T. Prakasam was the chief minister of Madras presidency immediately after the 1946 election. As a Telugu speaker, he was often at odds with the Madras Provincial Congress Committee president K. Kamaraj. Kamaraj forced the resignation of Prakasam within a year. In 1947, Omandur Ramaswamy Reddiar, Kamaraj's nominee, became the chief minister. When Reddiar showed signs of independence, Kamaraj engineered his removal by a vote of no confidence in Congress Legislature Party on 31 March 1949. P. S. Kumaraswamy Raja, the next chief minister who formed the government on 6 April 1949, was believed to be a stooge of Kamaraj. He retained the chief ministership until the 1952 election, when he lost his seat in Srivilliputhur constituency. The main factions within the Madras Congress Party during this period were: 1) the Andhra (Prakasam) faction, 2) the Rajaji faction 3) Kamaraj faction (Tamil non-Brahmin members) and 4)the Bezawada Gopala Reddy and Kala Venkata Rao faction supported by the All India Congress Committee president Pattabhi Sitaramayya
The Prakasam faction later split from the Congress to form the Hyderabad State Praja Party. The party merged with the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party in June 1951.
Communists in electoral process In 1951, the Communist Party of India (CPI), which had waged an armed struggle from 1948 to 1951, gave up the attempt to wrest power through force and joined the political mainstream. At the 1951 congress of the party, "People's Democracy" was replaced by "National Democracy" as the main slogan of the party and the decision was made to contest the elections. One of the armed movements supported by the CPI was the Telangana Rebellion in the princely state of Hyderabad. Though the rebellion was crushed by 1951, the communists retained widespread support in the neighboring Andhra region. This was due to their policy of linguistic nationalism (the demand for a separate state of Telugu speaking people) and their support base amongst the Kamma caste which was opposed to the Reddy supported Congress. Until then, all the previous elections had been conducted on a limited franchise based on property ownership qualifications. The election of 1951 was the first one to be based on a universal franchise. The Communists had the support of most of the first time voters – landless peasants and agricultural labourers.Foreign News: Shocking Truth, Time Magazine 10 February 1947
They also had a strong presence in the agrarian district of Tanjore in Tamil Nadu where they were supported by the Dravidar Kazhagam. Besides they were strong in the Malabar District on the West Coast that would later become what is now Northern Kerala since 1956. Their agenda in Malabar was the unification of Malayalam speaking areas of Madras state with the Travancore-Cochin to form Aikya Keralam (United Kerala).
Split in the Dravidian Movement The Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), the main opposition party to the Congress in the Tamil speaking areas of the state split in 1949. C. N. Annadurai, once a protege of the DK leader Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, quit the DK and founded a new party – Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Both the DK and the DMK were secessionist advocates for Dravidistan- a separate state for Dravidians. Some of the old guard of the Justice party, which had been renamed as Dravidar Kazhagam in 1944, refused to accept Periyar's leadership. Led by P. T. Rajan, they insisted they were still the real Justice party and contested the 1952 elections under the "Scales" symbol.
Constituencies According to the Delimitation of Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies (Madras) Order, 1951, made by the President under sections 6 and 9 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the Madras Legislative Assembly consisted of 375 seats to be filled by election, distributed in 309 constituencies and 62 two-member constituencies in each of which a seat had been reserved for Scheduled Castes and four two-member constituencies in each of which a seat had been reserved for Scheduled Tribes. Three seats were uncontested. The elections were conducted for the remaining 372 seats.
The two member constituencies were established in accordance to Article 332 of the Indian Constitution. The voting method and the plurality electoral formula were defined in The Representation of People Act, 1950. Out of the total 309 constituencies in the undivided Madras State, 66 were two member constituencies, 62 of which had one seat reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates and 4 for Scheduled Tribe candidates.The State Legislature – Origin and Evolution These constituencies were larger in size and had greater number of voters (more than 1,00,000) when compared to general constituencies. Two separate list of candidates, a general list and a reserved list, contested in those constituencies. Each voter had to cast two votes – one for each list.
The two winners were chosen as follows:
Reserved Member – Candidate with the most votes among the reserved (SC/ST) list candidates General Member – Candidate with the most votes among the rest of the candidates excluding the Reserved Member (including both reserved and general lists)
This system led to anomalies. In some cases like the Coimbatore – II constituency in the 1957 election, both elected members belonged to the reserved list – the candidate with second highest number of votes in reserved list secured more votes than the highest vote getter in the general list. Multiple members were elected only in the 1952 and 1957 elections as double member representation was abolished in 1961 by the enactment of Two-Member Constituencies Abolition Act (1961).
Political parties The main opponents for the Congress in Madras were the CPI, Prakasam's Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP) and the Krishikar Lok Party led by N. G. Ranga (a breakaway group from KMPP's predecessor - the Hyderabad State Praja Party). The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) did not contest the 1952 election. Instead it supported the candidates of the Vanniyar caste based parties – the Commonweal Party and the Tamil Nadu Toilers Party – and five independents in Chengelpet, Salem, North and South Arcot districts. The candidates they backed had to sign a pledge to support DMK's agenda in the legislative assembly. The Dravidar Kazhagam also did not participate directly in the election. However, it supported the Communists in an effort to defeat the Indian National Congress which it claimed was a Brahmin dominated party. It also supported a number of other parties and Independents in the election. The Justice party, led by P. T. Rajan contested in nine seats.
Election Polling was held in nine phases (2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 16, 21 and 25 January) in January 1952. In all, 2,507 persons filed their nominations-2,472 men and 35 women. Of these, the nominations were rejected in respect of 79 candidates-78 men and one woman. Seven hundred and fifty-one candidates withdrew their nominations in time-741 men and 10 women.
Results
!colspan=9| |- style="background-color:#E9E9E9; text-align:center;" ! class="unsortable" | ! Political party !! Flag !! Seats Contested !! Won !! % of Seats !! Votes !! Vote % ! class="unsortable"|Govt. Formation |- style="background: #90EE90;"
| 367 || 152 || 40.53 || 69,88,701 || 34.88 | rowspan="2" style="background-color:#90EE90;text-align:center"|Leading Party
| 163 || 13 || 3.47 || 12,99,282 || 6.48
| 148 || 35 || 9.33 || 18,03,377 || 9.00 | rowspan="2" style="background-color:#00FF00;text-align:center"|**Full support
| 131 || 62 || 16.53 || 26,40,337 || 13.18 |- style="background: #00FF7F;"
| 63 || 15 || 4.00 || 6,29,893 || 3.14 | rowspan="4" style="background-color:#00FA9A;text-align:center"|*Outside support, joined the cabinet in 1954
| 37 || 2 || 0.53 || 3,39,680 || 1.70 |- style="background: #00FA9A;"
| 34 || 19 || 5.07 || 8,52,330 || 4.25 |- style="background: #00FF00;"
| 13 || 6 || 1.60 || 2,18,288 || 1.09 |- style="background: #00FF00;"
| 13 || 5 || 1.33 || 1,86,546 || 0.93 | rowspan="4" style="background-color:#00FF7F;text-align:center"|#3 KLP legislators and 15 Independents joined Congress
| 9 || 1 || 0.27 || 82,231 || 0.41
| 6 || 3 || 0.80 || 1,38,203 || 0.69 |- style="background: #00FF7F;"
| 667 || 62 || 16.53 || 47,58,768 || 23.75 |- class="unsortable" style="background-color:#E9E9E9" ! colspan = 3| Total seats ! 375 !! style="text-align:center;" |Voters !! 3,66,00,615 !! style="text-align:center;" |Turnout
! colspan = 2| 2,00,38,423 (54.75%)
Government formation
Election of C. Rajagopalachari
The composite Madras State then included parts of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka with a total of 375 assembly members. The Indian National Congress was reduced to a minority with 152 members in an assembly of 375. It won four seats from the 29 in Malabar, 43 of the 143 in the Andhra areas, 96 of the 190 Tamil constituencies and 9 of the 11 seats from Kannada speaking areas. Kumaraswami Raja, the incumbent chief minister lost the election along with five members of his cabinet (Bezawada Gopala Reddy, Kala Venkata Rao, K. Chandramouli, K. Madhava Menon and M. Bhaktavatsalam).
A large number of CPI members were elected from Andhra region of Madras state which had for some years demanded a separate state for Telugu speaking areas. In February 1952, the non-congress members convened under T. Prakasam, leader of the KMPP, at Madras to form the United Democratic Front (UDF) and issued a "Common Minimum Program". They claimed to control 166 seats (CPI and CPI backed independents – 70, KMPP – 36, Tamil Nadu Toilers Party – 19, Commonweal party – 6, FBL (MG) – 3, SCF – 1, JUSP −1 and Independents – 30). Prakasam wrote to the Governor Sri Prakasa staking his claim to form the Government as the leader of the single largest formation. The Congress did not want the Communists taking power or to impose Governor's rule in the state. It brought Rajaji out of retirement to form the Government as a consensus candidate. Kamaraj, President of the Madras Provincial Congress Committee was of the opinion that the UDF should be allowed to form the Government as he had predicted the weak coalition might eventually fall apart. However other leaders such as T. T. Krishnamachari and Ramnath Goenka wanted Rajaji to be nominated to form the Government.