The Indian National Congress won India's first general election, taking power under the country's newly adopted constitution.¹

It won 364 of the 489 seats, a majority on its own.

That was 119 seats above the 245-seat mark needed for a majority.

The Independent candidates finished second, taking 38 seats on 15.9% of the vote.

The INC's vote share — the slice of all ballots cast that went to one party or candidate — reached 45.0%, well below the 74.4% of seats that share converted into under India's first-past-the-post system.

In June 1951 J.B. Kripalani led a group of dissident Congress members out of the party to form the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party. Kripalani stood against the Congress nominee in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh; his wife Sucheta Kripalani contested New Delhi on the new party's ticket against Congress's Manmohini Sahgal.²

On 27 September 1951 Law Minister B.R. Ambedkar resigned from Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet after the Hindu Code Bill was defeated in Parliament. He then contested Bombay North Central for the Scheduled Castes Federation, against Congress nominee Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar, his own former assistant.³

On 21 October 1951 Syama Prasad Mookerjee founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in Delhi and became its first president. It was the new party's first general election, and Mookerjee himself contested and was elected from Calcutta South East.⁴

On 25 October 1951 the Communist Party of India called on its Telangana rebels to lay down arms, ending years of armed uprising in Hyderabad state as the party turned to contesting the election instead.⁵

This was the first election ever held under India's new constitution, contested on an entirely new set of constituency boundaries.¹⁶

Drawing those boundaries is called delimitation — the official redrawing of constituency boundaries, which happens every so often as India's population shifts.

Some of that year's constituencies used a multi-member design, sending more than one MP to Parliament from a single contest.

86 of the 401 constituencies worked this way.

1 constituency went further still, sending an extra member of its own.

Contai, West Bengal saw the tightest finish of the election: the winner's margin — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second — was 127 votes.

Bastar, Madhya Pradesh saw the widest margin of the election, with the winner finishing 66.1% of the vote ahead of the runner-up.

The highest turnout anywhere in the country was in Kottayam, Travancore-Cochin: 80.5% of registered voters there turned out to cast a ballot.

North Bengal, West Bengal had the largest electorate anywhere in the country, with 9,31,845 registered voters on its rolls.

Karnal, Punjab had the most crowded ballot of the election, with 14 candidates standing.

5 seats were unopposed returns that year — a seat where only one candidate stood, so no vote was needed to decide it.

India ran its first general election from October 1951 to February 1952, the first time every citizen aged 21 or older could vote regardless of property, education, sex or caste.⁷

About 173 million people were eligible, most of them voting for the very first time.⁷

Their votes were cast on a constituency map that had never existed before: the Representation of the People Act, 1950 empowered the President, advised by the Election Commission and Parliament, to draw it from scratch.⁶