NOTES

Political Parties
 Political parties are one of the most visible institutions in a democracy.
 For the ordinary citizens, democracy is equal to political parties. Thus, it is important to
know the nature and working of political parties.

Meaning of Political Parties

A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold
power in the government.
All political parties have some policies and programmes for the society with a view to
promote the collective good.
They try to persuade people why their policies are better than others. They seek to
implement their policies by winning popular support through elections.
Political parties reflect fundanmental political divisions in a society. All the parties
favour certain part of the society and thus they involve partisanship.
A party is known by which part it stands for, which poliçies it supports and whose
interests it upholds.
A political party has following three components
 The leaders
 The active members
 The followers

Functions of Political Parties

Political parties fill political offices and exercise political power by performing the
following functions
Candidates are put forward by political parties to contest elections. These candidates
may be chosen by the top leaders or by members of the party. In some countries like
USA, members and supporters of a party choose its candidate.
Parties put forward their policies and programmes for voters to choose from them.
Political parties play a major role in making laws for the country. No law can become a
bill unless majority parties support it.
Political parties form and run governments. The big policy decision taken by political
executive come from the political parties.
Parties that lose election, play the role of opposition to the party in power.
Parties shape public opinion. They raise and highlight issues. Parties sometimes also
launch movements for the resolution of the problem faced by the people.
 Political parties provide people access to government machinery and welfare schemes.
It is easy for the public to approach their local party leader than a government officer.
The local party leader has to listen to the public demand, otherwise people can reject
them in the next elections.

Necessity of Political Parties

Political parties are needed because they perform variety of functions. Modern
democracies cannot exist without political parties.
Without existence of parties, following situations may occur
Every candidate in the elections will be independent. No one will be able to make
any promises to the people about any major policy changes.
The government may be formed, but its utility will remain ever uncertain. Elected
representatives will be accountable to their constituency for what they do in the
locality. But no one will be responsible for how the country will be run.
o The Panchayat elections are non-party based elections to the Panchayat in many states
of India. Although, the parties do not contest formally, it is generally noticed that the
village gets split into more than one group, each of which puts up a 'panel' of its
candidates. This creates need for the political party.
o Society needs a mechanism to support or restrain the government, make policies, justify
or oppose them. Political parties fulfil these needs that every representative government
has. Thus, political parties are a necessary condition for a democracy.

Political Party Systems

The different countries around the world opt difterent party systems.
Broadly, political party system can be divided into following three categories.
One-Party System
 In this party system, only one party is allowed to control and run the government.
 China has one-party system. This system is not a good option for democracy because
it does not provide a fair chance for competing parties to gain power.
Two-Party System
 In this party system, two parties have a serious chance to win majority and form
government. The power usually changes between two main parties.
 The United States of America and United Kingdom are the examples of two-party
system.
Multi-Party System
 In this party system, more than two political parties contest election to gain power.
 In India, there is a multi-party system with more than 750 parties registered by the
Election Commission. It allows a variety of interests and opinions to enjoy political
representation.

Coalition of Parties
In India, government is formed by various parties coming together in a coalition. When
several parties in a multi-party system join hands for the purpose of contesting and
winning, it is called alliance or front.

Ideal Party System

It cannot be judged that which party system is the ideal one as party system cannot be
chosen.
It evolves over a long time, depending on the nature of society, its social and regional
divisions, its history of politics and its system of elections.
India has multi-party system. The social and geographical diversity of our country is not
easily absorbed by two or even three parties. Thus, no particular system is ideal for all
countries.

Popular Participation in Political Parties

Political parties are facing crisis of unpopularity and indifference among the citizens.
The evidence, based on a series of large sample surveys conducted over several
decades, shows that
Political parties do not enjoy much trust among the people in South Asia.
Yet the level of participation in the activities of political parties is
fairly high.
The proportion of the members of some political party is higher in India than many
advanced countries like Canada, Japan, Spain and South Korea.
Over the last three decades, the proportion of members and close a political party in
India has gone up steadily.

Types of Political Parties

Democracies that follow a federal system all over the world tend to have two kinds of
political parties
Parties that are present in only one of the federal units (State parties)
Parties that are present in several or all units of the federation (National parties).
In India, there are both national parties and state parties. Every party in the country has
to register with the Election Commisson.
 National Parties
A party that secures at least 6% of the total votes in Lok Sabha elections or Assembly
elections in 4 states and wins at least 4 seats in the Lok Sabha, is recognised as a
National Party.
The commission treats all parties equally, but it offers some special facilities to large
and established parties.
These parties are given a unique symbol - only the official candidates of that party can
use that election symbol.
Parties that get this privilege and some other special facilities are 'recognised' by the
Election Commission for this purpose. That is why, these parties are called 'recognised
political parties'.

Some Important National Political Parties of India

In 2017, there were seven recognised national political parties in the country. These are
Indian National Congress (INC)
 It is popularly known as the Congress Party which is one of the oldest parties of the
world founded in 1885.
 It supports secularism and welfare of weaker sections and minorities.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
 It was founded in 1980, by reviving the erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
 The aim of the party is to build a strong and modern India by drawing inspiration from
India's ancient culture and values.
 It came to the power in 1998 as the leader of the National Democratic Alliance
including several state and regional parties.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)
 It was founded in 1984, under the leadership of Kanshi Ram. Seeks to represent and
secure power for the Bahujan Samaj which includes the Dalits, Adivasis, OBCS and
religious minorities.
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)
 It was founded in 1964. It believes in Marxism-Leninism.
 supports socialism, secularism and democracy and opposes imperialism and
communalism.
Communist Party of India (CPI)
 Founded in 1925, it believes in Marxism-Leninism, secularism and democracy.
 It opposes the forces of secessionism and communalism.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)
 Founded in 1999, following a split in the Congress Party.
 It supports democracy, Gandhian secularism, equity, social justice and federalism.
 All India Trinamool Congress (AITCU)
 This party is launched on 1 January, 1998 under the leadership of Mamta Banerjee.
 This party is recognised as a national party in 2016. The party symbol is flowers and
grass.

State Parties
A party that secures at least 6% of the total votes in an election to the Legislative
Assembly of a state and wins at least 2 seats, is recognised as a state party.
These are commonly referred to as regional parties. Still such parties need not be
regional in their ideology or outlook.

State Parties with National Level Organisation

Some of the regional parties are all India parties that happen to have succeeded only in
some states.
Parties like the Samajwadi Party, Samata Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal have national
level political organisation with units in several states.
Some of these parties like Biju Janata Dal, Sikkim Democratic Front and Mizo National
Front are conscious about their state identity.

Status of State Parties

Over the last three decades, the number and strength of these parties has expanded. This
made the Parliament of India politically more and more diverse.
No national party is able to secure on its own a majority in Lok Sabha. As a result, the
national parties are compelled to form alliances with state parties.
Since 1996, nearly every of the state parties has got an opportunity to be a part of one or
the other national level Coalition Government.
This has contributed to the strengthening of federalism and democracy in our country.
Teaching Aid- Map – regional parties of India

Challenges to Political Parties

All over the world, people are dissatisfied with the performance of the political parties.
This is the case in our country too.
Popular dissatisfaction and criticism has focussed on four problem areas in the working
of political parties.
Political parties need to face and overcome these challenges.
 First Challenge : Lack of Internal Democracy within Parties
In most of the political parties, the power is concentrated in the hands of one or few
leaders at the top.
Ordinary members of the party do not get sufficient information about the happenings
inside the party.
The leaders assume greater power to make decisions in the name of the party.

Second Challenge : Dynastic Succession

The top positions in many political parties are generally controlled by members of one
family.
Leaders on the top have unfair chance of favouring their families and friends.
This is also bad for democracy, since people who do not have adequate experience or
popular support, come to occupy positions of power.

Third Challenge : Money and Muscle Power

This is a prominent challenge to political parties during elections. Since parties are
focussed only on winning elections, they tend to use shortcuts to win elections.
Such shortcuts include the following
 They tend to nominate those candidates who have or can raise lots of money.
 Rich people and companies who give funds to the parties tend to have influence on the
policies and decisions of the party.
 In some cases, parties support criminals who can win elections.

Fourth Challenge: Meaningful Choice to the Voters

It states that very often parties do not seem to offer a meaningful choice to the voters.
In order to offer meaningful choice, parties must be significantly different.
For example, in our country too, the differences among all the major parties on the
economic policies have reduced. Those who want really different policies have no
option available to them.

Reformation of Political Parties

In order to face the challenges, political parties need to be reformed.

Some of the recent efforts and suggestions in our country to reform the
political parties are
Anti-Defection Law
 According to this law, MLAS or MPs cannot change the party after the election. If any
MLA or MP changes parties, he or she will lose the seat in the Legislature.
 This was done because many elected representatives were indulging in defection in
order to become ministers or for cash rewards.
Details of Property and Criminal Cases
 In order to reduce the influence of money and criminals, the Supreme Court of our
country passed an order.
 Now, it becomes mandatory for every candidate who contest elections to file an
affidavit giving details of his property and criminal cases pending against him.
 But there is no system to check if the information given by the candidate is true or not.
File an Income Tax Return
 The Election Commission passed an order making it necessary for political parties to
hold their organisational elections and file their income tax returns.
 The parties have started doing so but sometimes, it is mere formality.

Besides these suggestions, many other suggestions are often made to reform political
parties. These are as follows
A law should be made to regulate the internal affairs of political parties. It should be
made compulsory for political parties to maintain a register of its members, to follow its
own Constitution, to have an independent authority, to act as a judge in case of party
disputes and to hold open elections to the highest posts.
It should be made mandatory for political parties to give a minimum number of tickets
(about one-third) to women candidates. Similarly, there should be a quota for women in
the decision-making bodies of the party.
There should be state funding of elections. The government should give parties money
to support their election expenses.

There are two other ways in which political parties can be reformed
People can put pressure on political parties through petitions, publicity and agitations. If
political party feels that it would lose public support, it would become more serious
about reforms.
Political parties can improve if those who want this, join political parties. The quality of
democracy will improve by the degree of public participation and awareness.