Political Parties and their types "EMPOWER IAS"

Political Parties and their types

• The contribution reports of only 78 (3.39%) of the total 2,301 registered unrecognized political parties are available in the public domain for 2018-19 reports the Association For Democratic Reforms (ADR).

Classification of Political Parties in India

(A) National parties

• A registered party is recognised as a national party only if it fulfils any one of the three conditions listed below:
• A party should win 2% of seats in the Lok Sabha from at least three different states.
• At a general election to Lok Sabha or Legislative Assembly, the party polls 6% of votes in any four or more states and in addition, it wins four Lok Sabha seats.
• A party gets recognition as a state party in four states.
• A party recognised as a National party can be derecognized if it fails to maintain the criteria.

 

(B) State parties

• A party has to fulfil any of the following conditions for recognition as a state party:
• A party should secure at least 6% of valid votes polled in an election to the state legislative assembly and win at least 2 seats in that state assembly.
• A party should secure at least 6% of valid votes polled in an election to Lok Sabha and win at least 1 seat in Lok Sabha.
• A party should win a minimum of three per cent of the total number of seats or a minimum of three seats in the Legislative Assembly, whichever is higher.
• A party should win at least one seat in the Lok Sabha for every 25 seats or any fraction thereof allotted to that State.
• Under the liberalized criteria, one more clause that it will be eligible for recognition as state party if it secures 8% or more of the total valid votes polled in the state.

 

Composition and Constitution of Political Parties

A political party has three components: the leaders, the active members and the followers.

In modern political system, there are four types of political parties:

(i) Reactionary political parties, which believe in old political and socio-economic system.

(ii) Conservative political parties believe in maintaining status quo.

(iii) Liberal parties believe in reforming the existing system gradually.

(iv) Radical parties believe in changing the system very quickly and drastically, sometimes, even by overthrowing the existing institutions. Radical parties are called as leftist, liberal as centrist and conservative and reactionaries as rightists.

 

Types of political systems in the world:

• There are three kinds of political system in the world mentioned below:
• -One party system in which only one party exist and rule the country; opposition parties are not allowed. This kind of system is followed in China
• -Two party system in which only two major parties exist such as in the USA and the UK
• -Multi-party system in which includes multiple parties, for example, in India and France.

 

Party System in India

Multi-party System

• India follows multi-party system and has the largest number of political parties in the world. This kind of system provides a multiple option to the people to choose from. It also gives opportunity to the regional parties to participate in national politics. On the other hand, the negative aspects of this system are the hung parliaments, hung assemblies, coalition governments and unstable governments.
• Many political parties are popular due to their leaders. Many parties have been formed around one leader. These leaders have become more important than the political party and its ideology. Lok Sabha victory of BJP in 2014 is majorly attributed to Narendra Modi (present Prime Minister of India). However, many other political parties such as Biju Janata Dal, Congress (I), Lok Dal (A) etc have been named after political leaders.
• Regional political parties have a stronghold in one or two states. These parties are gaining at the cost of national political parties. Many of these parties are in power in different states. The rise of power of regional political parties has significantly increased their role in government formation at centre and in various state elections.

 

Recognition of National and State Parties

• The Election Commission is responsible to register political parties in India. It gives recognition to political parties as national or state political parties on the basis of their performance in the elections. These parties are called recognized parties. Apart from these, there are registered unrecognized parties.
• The election commission allots a symbol exclusively to every national political party, which is reserved for the party to be used throughout the country. Likewise, every state political party is allotted a symbol which is reserved for that party to be used throughout that state. These symbols are known as reserved symbols, which cannot be used by any other candidate/party. Other candidates can choose from the free symbols.

Conditions for Recognition as a National Party are:

• If it secures at least six per cent of the total valid votes from four or more states in Lok Sabha elections or assembly elections and wins at least four seats in the Lok Sabha from any state or states;
• If it wins two percent of the seats in the Lok Sabha and these candidates are from three states;
• If it is recognized as state party in four states