Congress stays on top, but still no majority
Congress won again in Travancore-Cochin's second general election, but still fell short of a majority.
Congress stays on top, but still no majority
What happened
Congress remained the largest party in Travancore-Cochin's second election, but no party held a majority.
The Indian National Congress won 45 of the 117 seats.
That left it short of the 59-seat majority mark, a hung house where no single party wins enough seats to govern alone.
Its nearest rival, the Communist Party of India, won 23 seats.
What changed
The biggest change was in second place, where a new party broke through.
Congress won 45 seats this time, barely more than the 44 it had taken previously.
The CPI won seats in Travancore-Cochin for the first time, finishing as the runner-up with 23 seats.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The closest race was Kothyamanglam, Travancore-Cochin, decided by a margin — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second — of just 104 votes.
The widest win was in Tiruvattar, Travancore-Cochin, where the winner finished 77.8% ahead of the runner-up.
Across the state, about 74.4% of registered voters turned out to cast a ballot — the highest turnout Travancore-Cochin ever recorded.
The most crowded contest was Devicolam, Travancore-Cochin, where 6 candidates stood for a single seat.
The backdrop
Travancore-Cochin was itself a young state, formed a few years earlier by merging former princely states.
The State of Travancore-Cochin was formed on 1 July 1949 through the merger of the princely states of Travancore and Cochin. The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 dissolved it on 1 November 1956; most of its territory became the new state of Kerala, with Tamil-majority areas transferred to Madras State.