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We present the analyses of the stellar contents associated with the extended HII region Sh2-252 using deep optical UBVRI photometry, slit and slitless spectroscopy along with the near-infrared (NIR) data from Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) for an area ∼ 1 {x} 1 deg². We have studied the sub-regions of Sh2-252, which includes four compact-HII (CHII) regions, namely A, B, C and E, and two clusters, NGC 2175s and Teutsch 136 (Teu 136). Of the 15 spectroscopically observed bright stars, eight have been identified as massive members of spectral class earlier than B3. From the spectrophotometric analyses, we derived the average distance of the region as 2.4±0.2kpc, and the reddening E(B - V) of the massive members is found to vary between 0.35 and 2.1mag. We found that NGC 2175s and Teu 136, located towards the eastern edge of the complex, are the sub-clusters of Sh2-252. The stellar surface density distribution in K band shows clustering associated with the regions A, C, E, NGC 2175s and Teu 136. We have also identified the candidate ionizing sources of the CHII regions. 61 Hα emission sources are identified using slitless spectroscopy. The distribution of the Hα emission sources and candidate young stellar objects (YSOs) with IR excess on the V/(V - I) colour–magnitude diagram (CMD) shows that a majority of them have approximate ages between 0.1 and 5Myr and masses in the range of 0.3–2.5 M_☉. The optical CMDs of the candidate pre-main-sequence (PMS) sources in the individual regions also show an age spread of 0.1–5Myr for each of them. We calculated the K-band luminosity functions (KLFs) for the sub-regions A, C, E, NGC 2175s and Teu 136. Within errors, the KLFs for all the sub-regions are found to be similar and comparable to that of young clusters of age <5Myr. We also estimated the mass function of the PMS sample of the individual regions in the mass range of 0.3–2.5M_☉. In general, the slopes of the MFs of all the sub-regions are found comparable to the Salpeter value.