Kerala Legislative Assembly election, 1965

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All 133 seats in the Kerala Legislative Assembly
67 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader		R. Sankar
Party	CPI(M)	INC	KEC
Last election	Did not contest	43	Did not contest
Seats won	40	36	23
Seat change	N/A	27	N/A
Popular vote	1,257,869	2,123,660	796,291
Percentage	19.87%	33.55%	12.58%
Swing	N/A	0.87%	N/A

Chief Minister before election

R. Sankar
INC

Chief Minister

Vacant
President's Rule

R. Sankar
INC

Vacant
President's Rule

The Kerala Legislative Assembly election of 1965 was the third assembly election in the Indian state of Kerala.

Both Indian National Congress and Communist Party of India went through big changes during the period that preceded the elections in 1965. Congress was split and a new state party Kerala Congress was formed.

Communist Party of India also went through a split during this time. In 1962, China attacked India, and Communist Party was divided ideologically into two groups. The official faction, sided with Russian ideology stood behind Nehru during the war. The group that sided with Chinese ideology were pushed to the bring. Eventually this group split off from CPI and formed Communist Party of India (Marxist). The official group was headed by S. A. Danke at national level. In Kerala, the two Communist parties fought each other in the 1965 elections. Most CPI(M) leaders were put behind the bars, and many contested the elections from behind the bars.

There were 133 constituencies in total, out of which 120 were General Category, 11 Scheduled Castes and 2 Scheduled Tribe seats.

Three national parties - Indian National Congress, Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist) and three state level parties Kerala Congress, Indian Union Muslim League and Samyukta Socialist Party took part in the elections.

No party or group was able to form a government due to the fractured nature of results. The result was dissolution of the assembly again, and the state was again under Presidents Rule.

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