Independent India’s first elections were held from October 25, 1951 to February 21, 1952. To commemorate that monumental exercise, The Wire is publishing a series of articles exploring various aspects of the first ever general election in independent India. Read it here.
India’s first general election, which took place between October 25, 1951 and February 21, 1952, was a colossal exercise; one-sixth of the world’s population was going to vote in one election.
With the introduction of universal adult suffrage, the election saw the largest share of the Indian populace vote at the same time.
According to India’s 23rd Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora’s foreword to the reprint of the ECI’s report on the first general election, no more than 14% of the Indian population had ever voted at the same time in the provincial elections held pre-independence. In the 1951-1952 elections, the electorate was around 173 million.
The elections were organised by the first CEC of India, Sukumar Sen, to replace the Jawaharlal Nehru-led Constituent Assembly, which served as the Parliament until the first elected government took charge.
A total of 489 Lok Sabha seats were contested in the election from 401 constituencies, since some had more than one seat assigned to them. While the elections officially took eight months, reports say that the majority of the population that voted (voter turnout was around 45%) did so only in 1952.
While Nehru and the Congress enjoyed a landslide victory, winning more seats than all opposition parties combined (not to mention almost 45% of all votes), it is still worth examining these varied opposition parties and the political undercurrents they represented then, to better understand how these inclinations went on to present themselves in the country’s political landscape in the future.
A total of 53 political parties contested the first election, of which 14 were considered ‘national parties’ while the rest were considered ‘state’ parties. Apart from not having a consistent electoral symbol across the country (which was a significant concern, given the low literacy levels at the time), there were no further restrictions, so to speak, on the state parties.
Notable state parties included the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab, which managed to win four Lok Sabha seats, as well as the All India Ganatantra Parishad in Maharashtra, which won eight. However, this article focuses on the 14 national parties; their key leaders, their values, their performance in the 1952 elections and where (if anywhere) they currently stand.
The Indian National Congress (INC): The Congress was the clear front-runner in India’s first general election, boasting many prominent names from the country’s freedom struggle.
The party sailed to victory, winning 364 of the 479 seats that it contested, more than the total number of seats won by all other parties put together and leaving the runner-up Communist Party of India (CPI), which secured only 16 seats, in the dust.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of the country, contested for the Congress from the Allahabad East cum Jaunpur West District constituency as it was then known, renamed to Phulpur in subsequent years.
A poster from Nehru’s campaign in the 1952 election. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ INC.
Apart from Nehru, other prominent Congress leaders included Abul Kalam Azad, who contested from the Rampur District cum Bareilly District (West) constituency and became India’s first minister of education, national resources and scientific research and Gulzarilal Nanda, India’s first minister of planning and river valley schemes, who later served as the country’s interim Prime Minister twice; once after the death of Nehru and then again after the death of India’s second Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri.
The Congress’s dominion persisted for a long time after the first general election, winning 11 of the 14 elections until 2014, when the country’s tide decisively turned in favour of the BJP.
The Congress of today is nowhere near as dominant, managing to secure only 52 seats in the most recent Lok Sabha elections held in 2019 compared to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 303. What’s more, only three of India’s chief ministers currently belong to the Congress.
Communist Party of India (CPI): The CPI, as mentioned earlier, emerged as the runner up in India’s first general election. Despite only winning 16 seats, the CPI formed the principal opposition in the country.
The party was officially formed in Kanpur (erstwhile Cawnpore) in 1925 after a decade of efforts from various groups to create a communist presence in the country. After its formation, however, the ruling British had outlawed communist activity throughout India and the party, which was forced to operate clandestinely, saw its work constrained until India gained independence.
The party stood for, among other things, social equality for women, universal adult suffrage, land reforms and for all privately-owned enterprises to be brought under the control of the government. The core demand of the party going into the first general election was for a “national democracy.”
The party saw the greatest electoral success from Madras where eight of its candidates won seats, followed by West Bengal, where it won five seats, Tripura, where it won two and Orissa, where it won one.
The CPI formed the principal opposition in the next two Lok Sabha elections as well. However, in 1964, the Soviet and Chinese communist factions within the party split, giving rise to the CPI (Marxist).Thereafter, the new CPI(M) continued to secure more votes than the CPI in the country’s general elections.
Today, the CPI(M), with Sitaram Yachuri as its general secretary, is the more politically relevant of the two factions, being the party in power in Kerala with chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan at the helm.
At the state level, both the CPI and the CPI(M) are part of the Secular Progressive Alliance government in Tamil Nadu. The CPI(M) also has a political presence in West Bengal, being part of the ruling Left Front Alliance until 2011, after which the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) has been in power.
At the national level, the CPI(M) has three MPs in the Lok Sabha (one from Kerala and two from Tamil Nadu) while the CPI has two (both from Tamil Nadu).
Socialist Party (SOC): Following the CPI was Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohiya’s Socialist Party, which secured 12 seats of the 254 it contested in India’s first general election.
The Socialist Party had its roots in the Congress Socialist Party, a left-wing faction within the Indian National Congress formed by Narayan, Lohiya and Acharya Narendra Dev which separated from the former shortly after independence.
Ideological differences with Mahatma Gandhi as well as Nehru caused the party’s rift with the Congress, however, Lohiya continued to abide by the Gandhian principle of Ahimsa even as Narayan was an advocate of a more militant approach. The party’s guiding principle was one of decentralised socialism in which the role of the Union government would be more subdued and local authorities would hold more economic power in their hands.
Despite Narayan’s popularity on account of his role in India’s freedom struggle, the Socialist Party’s election haul was unimpressive and thus, after the election, it merged with J.B. Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP) to form the Praja Socialist Party (PSP).
A faction of the PSP led by Lohiya, in turn, broke from the PSP in 1955 and came to be known as the Samyukt Socialist Party or even just the Socialist Party, which eventually re-joined the PSP in 1972.
At the time, Narayan, too, stepped back from the PSP and only re-entered national politics once again in the mid-70s when he led the movement against Indira Gandhi, whose government he alleged was corrupt and undemocratic. Narayan subsequently led the calls for Gandhi’s disqualification prior to her declaration of the Emergency in 1975, for which he was arrested.
Upon being released from jail, Narayan and other PSP leaders joined hands with several other groups to form the Bharatiya Lok Dal which, following the Emergency in 1977, along with practically the entire opposition in the country, banded together to form the Janata Party to oppose the Gandhi-led Congress.
Several parties including the BJP and the Samajwadi Party can trace their lineage back to the Janata Party.
The leaders of the Janata Party with Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the centre, circa 1977. Photo: Twitter/jagdishshetty.
Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP): The Jivatram Bhagwandas ‘Acharya’ Kripalani-led KMPP was another Congress breakaway party and, after the INC and the Socialist Party, contested the third largest number of seats (145), but managed to win only nine of them.
Among the candidates the KMPP fielded were two former chief ministers – Prafulla Chandra Ghosh of West Bengal and Tanguturi Prakasam of Madras.
Kripalani was a Gandhian who featured prominently in the Civil Disobedience movement and subsequently, in the freedom struggle. He served as general-secretary of the Congress from 1934-1945 and was elected party president in 1946.
Kripalani had several ideological differences with Nehru and most of the Congress’ senior leadership, with the exception of Mahatma Gandhi, and had revealed in his posthumous autobiography that he took strong objection to the partition of the country.
In 1947, Kripalani had resigned from the post as Congress president, but remained a part of independent India’s interim government and was part of the Constituent Assembly. However, after he was unsuccessful in becoming party president in 1950, he resigned in 1951 to form the KMPP.
A 1989 stamp of J.B. Kripalani. Photo: India Post, GoI/ GODL.
Interestingly, Kripalani lost from the Faizabad District (North West) seat to Congress candidate Panna Lal but was subsequently elected to the Lok Sabha in a bye-election from the Bhagalpur constituency. His wife, Sucheta Kripalani, won from the New Delhi Lok Sabha seat.
After the election, as mentioned above, Kripalani’s KMPP joined hands with the Socialist Party to form the PSP. He was, once again elected as a PSP MP in 1957 before leaving the party in 1960. He subsequently won another general election as an independent and another as an MP of C. Rajgopalachari’s Swatantra Party.
Kirpalani also emerged as a vehement critic of Indira Gandhi during the JP movement and was among the leaders that were jailed for opposing her, despite being over eighty years old. He, along with Narayan, was asked to select the leader of the Janata Dal government.
Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha (HMS): While the HMS enjoy some support in pre-Independence India, the role of prominent leaders like Vinayak Damodar (‘Veer’) Savarkar and member Nathuram Godse in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 drew widespread criticism and meant that the party secured only four seats in the first election.
The HMS was preceded by several regional Hindu sabhas which came together under the banner of the Sarvadeshak (All India) Hindu Sabha in 1915. In 1921, at the Sabha’s sixth conference at the Haridwar Kumbh Mela, it adopted the name Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.
In its early days, the Sabha had the support of prominent leaders like Madan Mohan Malviya and Lala Lajpat Rai. Even Gandhi had attended the meeting at the Kumbh Mela. However, in the 1920s, the party came under the leadership of Savarkar and the more stringent ‘Hindutva’ ideology began to take over, leading to a faction led by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar to break off and form the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which considered itself a non-political entity.
In the years that followed, the HMS became diametrically opposed to Gandhi and the Congress, abstaining from the Civil Disobedience movement, forming coalition governments with the Muslim League in several provinces and demanding the partition of the country. Under Savarkar’s leadership, the party even refused to participate in the Quit India movement, choosing to stick to their posts within the British government.
In the aftermath of Partition, Savarkar blamed Gandhi’s ideology of non-violence for the loss of life on the Hindu side and incited his party members against him, eventually leading to HMS member Godse assassinating Gandhi. After Gandhi’s assassination, key leaders like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who had served in the ruling coalition in Bengal pre-independence and even in Nehru’s first interim government, left the party to form the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS).
Politically, the party never gained much favour in independent India, securing only one seat in the Lok Sabha since 1971. However, Savarkar’s Hindutva underpinnings, the demand for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and the formulation that Muslims and Christians are ‘outsiders’ in India is now being seen in an aggressive way in Indian politics today.
Present party members continue with efforts to revive Savarkar and, controversially, even Godse and, despite not having much influence by way of votes, still has an ideological influence on Indian politics.
Also read: During the Quit India Movement, the Hindu Mahasabha Played the British Game
Akhil Bharatiya Ram Rajya Parishad (RRP): Founded in 1948 by Hariharanand ‘Swami’ Karpatri, the RRP, as the name suggests, contested India’s first election on the platform of Hindu revivalism and the demand for a Hindu Rashtra.
The party only managed to win three seats of the 61 it contested in the first election, however, it managed moderate success in subsequent Vidhan Sabha elections in the country’s ‘Hindi belt’, particularly in Rajasthan.
Karpatri had established the Dharma Sangh in 1940, which engaged in re-converting Hindus who had been converted to Islam.
Like other Hindu nationalist parties at the time, the RRP had fought against Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar’s implementation of the Hindu Code Bills which sought to abolish Hindu personal law in favour of a secular unified civil code, an exercise initiated by the British.
The party eventually merged into Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s BJS in 1971, ahead of the JP movement and the eventual unification of the Congress’s opposition to form the Janata Party.
Reports also have it that Karpatri and the RRP were involved in the early days of the Ayodhya-Ram Mandir issue and had called for the demolition of the Babri Masjid at the site.
In 1949, after a local mazar near the Babri Masjid was demolished, Karpatri had reportedly played a key role in organising the nine-day Akhand Path (uninterrupted reading) of the Ramcharitramanas, following which some individuals broke into the Masjid and forcibly placed Ram idols within its bounds, kicking off the entire dispute.
However, the lack of widespread support for the cause at the time, the fact that the land legally belonged to the Waqf board and Nehru and the Congress’ intervention into the issue stopped it from featuring in the first Indian election.
Also read: Ayodhya: Once There Was A Mosque
All India Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS): Following Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s disagreements with Savarkar’s ideology and subsequent exit from the Hindu Mahasabha, he went on to establish the BJS in collaboration with the RSS which, incidentally, was looking to make a foray into national politics.
The BJS was aligned with the RSS’s Hindutva politics and managed to win three of the 49 seats it contested in the first election. Mukherjee himself won from the Calcutta South East constituency. Lal Krishna Advani, who was initially an RSS worker from Rajasthan, joined the BJS’s Rajasthan unit as a secretary soon after it was formed.
Portrait of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in the Indian Parliament. Photo: Government of India/ GODL.
Following Mukherjee’s death in 1953, RSS members slowly edged out the politicians from the party, transforming it more and more into its own political wing. The BJS then really made its presence felt, particularly in the country’s Hindi belt, after the 1967 Lok Sabha election, winning 35 seats compared to the Congress lowest haul till that point of 283 seats.
The BJS, then led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani was thereafter an integral component of the Janata Party coalition which took on the Indira Gandhi-led Congress.
However, infighting within the coalition after coming to power and the BJS’s refusal to accept the demands of other coalition members to snap ties with the RSS eventually culminated in a no confidence motion and the dissolution of the Morarji Desai-led government in 1979.
Following the dissolution, Vajpayee, Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi led a large number of BJS leaders into the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which retained the BJS’s Hindutva ideology but added elements of ‘Gandhian socialism’ in subsequent years. However, it remained in the wilderness till Advani’s Rath Yatra led to it becoming a challenge to the Congress’ hegemony, eventually leading it to power in Delhi, initially in the late 1990s.
Thereafter, after the Narendra Modi-led BJP rose to power in 2014, the party has consolidated power to become the dominant political party in the country, attuned as ever to its Hindutva ideology, anti-Muslim electoral pegs and the issues which brought it success in the past, most notably, the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December, 1992 and the agitation for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, as well as the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002
Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP): The RSP was formed in 1940 by Tridib Chaudhuri and emerged from the Bengali Anushilan Samiti, an organisation that advocated revolutionary violence to overthrow the colonial government.
Ahead of the first election, the RSP had negotiated an agreement with the United Socialist Organisation of India (USOI), a socialist coalition which agreed to support the RSP in two Lok Sabha seats but contest against them in others. The RSP ended up winning three seats, with leader Chaudhuri winning from Bengal’s Berhampore constituency.
A section of Anushilan Marxists had broken from the group in the 1930s and went on to eventually form the CPI. Anushilan Samiti members, however, refused to stand with the CPI in its opposition to the Congress and Gandhi and eventually joined the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) out of necessity, however, maintaining their own identity within it.
When a fierce contest emerged in 1939 between Subhas Chandra Bose (who believed that the prospect of another world war should be used to attack the British and gain independence) and Gandhi’s faction within the Congress, the Anushilan Samiti clearly supported Bose.
Thereafter, when Bose broke from the Congress to form the Forward Bloc, he attempted to recruit the Anushilan Samiti members within his Left Consolidation Committee, also including the CPI, CSP and other left parties. However, when this committee fell apart and most left parties abandoned it, the Anushilan Samiti members, too, struck out on their own to form the RSP, cutting ties with the CSP.
Moreover, after the Kerala Socialist Party split in 1949, a section of its leaders joined hands with the RSP and set up a branch in the state.
The RSP went through several splits in subsequent years. After a split in Kerala in 2002, some members of the party led by regional chief Baby John broke away to form the RSP (Bolshevik). However, after the party left the LDF in March 2014, it once again merged with the RSP (B) in the same year.
Later still, Kovoor Kunjumon led a faction away from the party to form the RSP (Leninist) which was faced with another split when party leader Ambathala Sreedharan Nair claimed that it was he and not Kunjumon who was the party’s general secretary.
Currently, the RSP’s seat of power is in West Bengal, having three MLAs in the state assembly. In Kerala, the RSP is part of the United Democratic Front (UDF) alliance while the RSP (L) is part of the LDF.
All India Scheduled Castes’ Federation (SCF): The SCF was founded by B.R. Ambedkar in 1942 and, following from his work against caste and capitalist structures in India with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Depressed Classes Federation (DCF), the party worked for the rights of Dalits in India.
Sivaraj was elected as the party president and P.N. Rajbhoj was elected the general secretary.
The SCF didn’t see much success in the 1952 election, securing only two of the 35 seats it contested. Interestingly, Ambedkar himself lost the election from the Bombay City North constituency to the Congress candidate Narayan Kajrolkar, who was once Ambedkar’s subordinate.
Later, however, Ambedkar became a member of the Rajya Sabha but when he tried to get elected to the Lok Sabha again in the 1954 bypolls in Bhandara, he was defeated by another Congress candidate.
B.R. Ambedkar with the women candidates of the SCF in 1942. Photo: Wikimedia Commons – CC0 1.
The SCF was succeeded by the Republican Party of India (RPI) which Ambedkar attempted to establish in 1956, However, he passed away before the party could be formed and thereafter, his followers officially formed the party on October 1, 1957. Sivaraj was among those present, as were Bhimrao Ambedkar’s son Yashwantrao ‘Bhaiyasaheb’ Ambedkar and Damodar Tatyaba ‘Dadasaheb’ Rupwate.
The RPI won nine seats in the second Lok Sabha elections in 1957. However, in subsequent years, the party saw inordinate splits, each of them claiming the name of the RPI. Thereafter, in 2009, all these factions came together to unite as the Republican Party of India (United), with the exception of the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh, a party founded in 1994 by B.R Ambedkar’s grandson, Prakash Yashwant ‘Balasaheb’ Ambedkar.
Later, two more factions from within the RPI (U) led by R.S. Gavai and Ramdas Athawale broke off to form the RPI (Gavai) and RPI (A) respectively.
The RPI (U) is currently part of the Republican Left Democratic Front (RLDF) in Maharashtra while the RPI (Gavai), which was once a part of the UPA government, is also limited to Maharashtra. Athawale is currently the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment in the BJP government.
Moreover, Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was once a member of the RPI.
All India Forward Bloc (Marxist group) (FBL-MG) and the All India Forward Bloc (Ruikar group) (FBL-RG): The All India Forward Bloc was established by Subhash Chandra Bose as a faction within the Congress, a few months after he resigned from the post of Congress president in 1939.
By the time of the first general election, the Forward Bloc itself had split into two factions; the Marxist group led by prominent Marxist leader Sheel Bhadra Yagee and the Ruikar group, and the ‘Subhashist’ led by R.S. Ruikar and S.S. Kavishar. While the former managed to secure one seat in the Lok Sabha in 1952, the other won nil.
Bose first established the Forward Bloc to rally all the left-wing elements within the Congress under different leadership while still remaining within the party. Besides Bose, Ruikar and Yagee, early members included Senapati Bapat, Ukkirapandi Muthuramalingam and the like.
Subash Chandra Bose. Photo: Twitter.
Soon after Independence and Partition, when the Congress began to remove dissenters from party ranks, the Forward Bloc decided to officially sever ties with it and form its own independent presence. However, differences between the Marxists and the Subhashits became more and more evident and the two factions; the FBL-MG and FBL-RG, drifted further apart, eventually contesting the elections separately.
In 1955, Yagee and Mohan Singh decided to re-join the Congress, however, they hadn’t consulted any of the other members. This decision led to their expulsion from the group and thereafter, Hemanta Kumar Bose was elected as the new chairman and R.K. Haldulkar, the new general secretary.
Over the years, as leaders exited the party, its importance continued to dwindle in the few states where it was prominent, leaving its presence today largely restricted to West Bengal. Even in the state, the Forward Bloc now only plays second-fiddle to the CPI(M) as a part of the Left Front Alliance. However, the party has no MPs or MLAs in the legislature at present.
Also read: Modi’s Portrayal of Netaji as a Hindu Militarist Does the Secular, Socialist Bose a Disservice
Krishikar Lok Party (KLP): The KLP was formed by farm leader N. G. Ranga when he decided to break away from the Hyderabad State Praja Party, which itself was formed when Ranga and Tanguturi Prakasam decided to part ways with the Congress
The party managed to secure only one seat in the first Indian election; Manak Chand won the seat for the party from the Bharatpur Sawaimadhopur constituency.
Thereafter, the KLP contested the 1952 assembly elections in Madras and secured 15 seats in the Vidhan Sabha. After the assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh in 1955, on Nehru’s request, the KLP was merged into the Congress. Ranga was elected to the second Lok Sabha in 1957 from the Tenali constituency on a Congress ticket.
Disillusioned with Nehru’s increasingly socialist politics such as instituting land reforms and cooperative farming process, in 1959, Ranga, along with C. Rajgopalachari, went on to break away from the Congress and establish the Swatantra Party. Ranga was elected its first president.
The Swatantra Party stood for a market-based capitalist economy in opposition to the socialist model emerging within the Congress; its leaders were of the belief that the good of the people would be maximised through minimal state intervention.
The Swatantra Party eventually joined the umbrella opposition to Indira Gandhi’s Congress (R) after the emergency years, the Janata Party, dwindling into insignificance thereafter.
Bolshevik Party of India (BPI): The BPI had its roots in the labour union movement in Bengal in the 1930s and officially came into existence after a section of leaders from the CPI, led by Niharendu Dutt Mazumdar and other leaders such as Sisir Roy, Sudha Roy and the like broke away.
The BPI was preceded by the Bengal Labour Party, formed by Mazumdar, which had merged with the CPI in the 1930s but had maintained its own presence as well. When Subhash Bose’s Forward Bloc broke from the Congress, the BPI chastised the CPI’s decision to side with the Congress and thus, these labour leaders broke off to form the BPI in 1939.
While the BPI supported the British effort in the Second World War initially, Mazumdar later supported the Quit India movement and, after he was released from jail, left the party and joined the Congress.
At the time of independence, Sisir Roy was serving as the party’s general secretary and under his leadership, the party denounced India’s partition and sought for a united India to break from the commonwealth and align itself with the likes of the Soviets and China.
In the first Indian general election, Sudha Roy was the sole candidate fielded by the BPI. She contested from Barrackpore constituency but was defeated by the Congress’s Ramananda Das.
After the first election, many members of the Forward Communist Party merged into the BPI, thus, while the party was based out of West Bengal, it gained bases in states such as Bihar and MP as well.
In the years that followed, prominent leader Biswanath Dubey left the party and after Sisir Roy’s death in 1960, Sudha Roy called for the BPI to join the CPI, which party cadres rejected, prompting her to leave the party with her followers and join the CPI.
As even more leaders left the party, the BPI’s share in national politics dwindled further. Today, it is limited to being part of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal
Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI): The RCPI had its roots in the Communist League founded by Saumyendranath Tagore after he, along with other founding members, decided to break from the CPI in 1934. It had adopted the name, the ‘Communist Party of India’ at a party conference in 1941 but later decided to change its name to the ‘Revolutionary Communist Party of India’ to avoid any confusion.
After independence and in the years before the first Indian election, the RCPI went through a split in leadership which saw one faction, led by Sudhir Dasgupta, take a more militant role in pushing for armed rebellion in India.
This ‘rebel group’ attempted to begin their armed revolt in 1949, stealing weapons from police posts and raiding factories. Several people died in the ensuing melee before the party members were caught. Around 40 cadres of the RCPI were arrested and sent to prison, Dasgupta being one of them, who was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The other faction distanced itself from the insurrectional politics of the rebels and operated largely underground, although no formal ban was imposed on them at the time.
Later, however, the RCPI attempted to mount a peasant uprising in Assam and seeking its secession from India. As the movement grew more violent and more and more casualties emerged, the government first banned the party and then employed police crackdowns on party cadres. Amidst the crackdown, the party also began losing its influence among the vote base.
In this light, the RCPI boycotted the 1952 elections. However, the Assam government withdrew the ban later that year.
In subsequent years, the party was involved in the forming of a few state governments; it was a part of the CPI(M)-led United Front government in West Bengal in 1969 and has then part of the Left Front alliance in West Bengal since it was formed, which was in power in the state until 2011.
