Political Parties

The first three chapters of this book met parties in passing — as partners in power-sharing (jess401), as vehicles of federal power (jess402) and as players in the politics of gender, religion and caste (jess403). This chapter looks at parties directly. NCERT asks two common questions — why do we need parties? and how many parties are good for a democracy? — then introduces India’s national and State parties and ends with what is wrong with parties and what can be done about it.

• Live pages to pair with: jess401 (power-sharing — coalitions as horizontal sharing among parties), jess402 (federalism — State parties and coalition governments), jess403 (caste and religion in party competition); keps203 (Election and Representation — the Election Commission, FPTP, electoral reforms); keps205 (Legislature — anti-defection law and the Speaker); keps207 (federalism and regional parties); leps202 (Era of One-Party Dominance — the Congress system); leps205 (Challenges to and Restoration of the Congress System — 1967 and after); leps208 (Recent Developments — the coalition era, 1989–2014). The next chapter, jess405, asks what democracy delivers.
• UPSC: parties, elections, the anti-defection law and the Election Commission are heavily tested in Prelims and GS2. Prelims has asked about one-party China (1981), how national parties are recognised (1988, 1991, 2001), the anti-defection law and the Tenth Schedule (1989, 1992, 1998, 2014, 2022, 2025), state funding (1997) and which parties were national (1995); Mains has asked about the party system in transition (2016), the anti-defection law and MPs’ role (2013), national versus regional parties (2022) and electoral reforms (2017).

• Party: a group that contests elections to hold power for agreed policies; involves partisanship; three components — leaders, active members, followers.
• Seven functions: contest elections, offer policies, make laws, form and run governments, act as opposition, shape opinion, give access to government.
• Party systems: one-party (China — not democratic), two-party (USA, UK), multiparty (India — coalitions and alliances); systems evolve, none is ideal everywhere.
• Participation (SDSA 2007): trust in parties low, but membership (India 11.4% vs global 9.1%) and closeness to a party (38% in 1971 → 48% in 2005) higher.
• Recognition: ECI registers parties; recognised State and national parties get reserved symbols; six national parties (ECI notification, 2023).
• Challenges and reforms: internal democracy, dynasties, money and muscle power, meaningful choice; anti-defection law, affidavits, ECI order; suggestions — and NCERT’s caution against over-regulation.

NCERT starts with a paradox. Parties are among the most visible institutions of democracy — people in remote areas who know little about the Constitution usually know about parties — yet visibility is not popularity: most people are critical of parties and blame them for much that is wrong, and parties have become identified with social and political divisions. So, do we need them at all? About a hundred years ago few countries had parties; now few do not.

A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in government, agreeing on policies and programmes meant to promote the collective good. Since people differ on what that good is, parties try to persuade voters that their policies are better and seek to carry them out by winning elections. Parties thus reflect fundamental political divisions; a party is about a part of society and involves partisanship. A party is known by which part it stands for, which policies it supports and whose interests it upholds. It has three components: the leaders, the active members and the followers.

Basically, parties fill political offices and exercise political power. NCERT lists seven functions: (1) they contest elections — in the USA a party’s members and supporters choose its candidates, a method more countries now follow; in India top leaders choose them; (2) they put forward policies and programmes — a party reduces a vast multitude of opinions to a few basic positions, and a government is expected to follow the ruling party’s line; (3) they play a decisive role in making laws, since most legislators follow the party leadership whatever their personal views; (4) they form and run governments, recruiting and training leaders and making them ministers; (5) losing parties play the role of opposition, criticising and mobilising against the government; (6) they shape public opinion, raising issues and sometimes launching movements — many pressure groups are extensions of parties; (7) they give people access to government machinery and welfare schemes — a local party leader is easier to approach than an officer, so people feel close to parties even when they do not fully trust them.

Why can modern democracies not do without parties? Imagine every candidate as an independent: no one could promise major policy changes, the government’s usefulness would be uncertain, and representatives would answer to their constituency for local work but no one would be responsible for how the country is run. Even in panchayat elections held without party symbols in many States, villages split into factions that put up ‘panels’ — which is what parties do. The rise of parties is tied to representative democracy: large, complex societies needed an agency to gather views and present them to government, to bring representatives together into a responsible government, and to support or restrain it. Parties, NCERT concludes, are a necessary condition for a democracy.

Any group of citizens may form a party; NCERT says more than 750 are registered with the Election Commission, but only a handful are serious contenders. In a one-party system only one party may control and run the government — NCERT’s example is China, where people are legally free to form parties but the electoral system does not permit free competition for power. NCERT rejects it: a democracy must allow at least two parties to compete with a fair chance of coming to power. In a two-party system power usually alternates between two main parties; others win a few seats — the USA and the UK. In a multiparty system more than two parties have a reasonable chance of power, alone or in alliance — India. Governments are often coalitions; parties that join hands to contest elections form an alliance or front — in 2004, NCERT says, the National Democratic Alliance, the United Progressive Alliance and the Left Front. A multiparty system can look messy and lead to instability, but lets a variety of interests be represented.

Which is better? NCERT says this is ‘not a very good question’: a party system is not chosen but evolves with a society’s nature, its social and regional divisions, its political history and its electoral system. India’s social and geographical diversity is not easily absorbed by two or even three parties. ‘No system is ideal for all countries and all situations.’

A box titled ‘Popular participation in political parties’ tests the claim that parties are in crisis because citizens are indifferent to them. Drawing on large sample surveys over several decades (the State of Democracy in South Asia study, 2007), it finds the claim only partly true for India: parties do not enjoy much trust in South Asia — those with ‘not much’ or ‘no’ trust outnumber those with ‘some’ or ‘great’ trust — and they are among the least trusted institutions worldwide. Yet participation is fairly high: the share of Indians who say they are party members is higher than in Canada, Japan, Spain and South Korea; it has risen steadily over three decades; and so has the share who feel close to a party.

Federal democracies tend to have two kinds of parties: those present in only one federal unit and those present in several or all — in India, ‘national parties’, whose State units by and large follow policies set nationally. Every party, NCERT says, must register with the Election Commission, which treats all parties equally but gives special facilities to large, established ones: a unique symbol that only the party’s official candidates may use, among others. Such parties are ‘recognised political parties’. NCERT gives one test for each tier: a party with at least 6% of the votes in a State Assembly election and two seats is a State party; a party with at least 6% of the votes in Lok Sabha or Assembly elections in four States and four Lok Sabha seats is a national party. By the Commission’s 2023 notification there are six recognised national parties.

NCERT then describes each national party in a short box. The table restates NCERT’s own descriptions, in our words, in the book’s alphabetical order; the last column adds the Election Commission’s 2024 Lok Sabha seat count as a bare fact. Nothing here evaluates any party.

Apart from the national parties, most major parties are classified by the Commission as State parties — commonly called regional parties. Yet they need not be regional in ideology: some, like the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal, have national-level organisations with units in several States; others, like the Biju Janata Dal, Sikkim Democratic Front, Mizo National Front and the then Telangana Rashtra Samithi, are conscious of their State identity. Over three decades their number and strength grew, making Parliament more diverse. No single national party won a Lok Sabha majority on its own ‘until 2014’, so national parties had to ally with State parties; since 1996 nearly every State party has had a chance to join a national coalition government. NCERT judges that this has strengthened federalism and democracy.

Because parties are the most visible face of democracy, people blame them for whatever goes wrong, and dissatisfaction is worldwide. NCERT identifies four problem areas. First, lack of internal democracy: power concentrates in one or a few leaders; parties keep no membership registers, hold no organisational meetings and conduct no regular internal elections; ordinary members lack information and influence; dissenters find it hard to stay; and personal loyalty to the leader counts for more than loyalty to principles. Second, dynastic succession: without open procedures, few ordinary workers rise to the top, and leaders can favour people close to them or family members; in many parties the top posts stay within one family — unfair to other members and bad for democracy when people without experience or popular support gain power. NCERT notes this tendency exists in some measure worldwide, including in older democracies.

Third, the growing role of money and muscle power, especially at elections: focused on winning, parties take short-cuts, nominating candidates who have or can raise money; rich donors and companies gain influence over policy; in some cases parties back criminals who can win. Democrats everywhere worry about the role of big money. Fourth, the lack of meaningful choice: ideological differences have narrowed in most parts of the world — NCERT’s example is Britain’s Labour and Conservative parties, which differ only on details — and in India differences on economic policy have reduced; sometimes voters cannot even choose very different leaders because the same leaders move between parties.

Are parties willing to reform? If not, can they be forced? In a democracy the final decision lies with leaders who represent parties; people can replace them only with another set of party leaders. NCERT reviews three recent efforts. (1) The anti-defection amendment: many elected representatives were changing parties to become ministers or for cash, so the Constitution was amended — an MP or MLA who changes parties now loses the seat. This has brought defection down but made dissent more difficult: members must accept what the leaders decide. (2) A Supreme Court order made it mandatory for every candidate to file an affidavit giving details of property and pending criminal cases. A lot of information is now public, but there is no system to check it, and it is not yet known whether the influence of the rich and of criminals has declined. (3) An Election Commission order requires parties to hold organisational elections and file income tax returns; parties comply, sometimes as a formality.

Further suggestions, not yet accepted by parties: a law to regulate parties’ internal affairs — a register of members, following their own constitutions, an independent authority to judge disputes, open elections to the highest posts; a mandatory minimum of about one-third of tickets for women, and a quota for women in party decision-making bodies; and state funding of elections — in kind (petrol, paper, telephone) or in cash according to votes won last time. NCERT cautions that over-regulation can be counter-productive, forcing parties to cheat the law, and that parties will not pass laws they dislike. Two other routes: public pressure through petitions, publicity and agitation by citizens, pressure groups, movements and the media; and reform from within, by people who want change joining parties — ‘the problem of bad politics can be solved by more and better politics’.

The chapter’s side questions and activities in page order. Short outlines follow.

Eleven questions, pages 61–62. Keys for the objective items are given with reasons; note the comments on Questions 7 and 10.

Numbers

One-liners

• A political party is a group that contests elections to hold power in government for agreed policies.
• Parties involve partisanship because they stand for a part of society.
• A party has three components: leaders, active members and followers.
• In India, top party leaders choose candidates; in the USA, members and supporters do.
• Parties are a necessary condition for a representative democracy.
• A one-party system is not a democratic option.
• India has a multiparty system; governments are often coalitions.
• A party system evolves; it is not chosen.
• Trust in parties is low, but party membership in India is higher than in many advanced democracies.
• The Election Commission registers parties and recognises State and national parties, which get reserved symbols.
• There are six recognised national parties (ECI notification, 2023).
• Since 1996 nearly every State party has shared power in a national coalition.
• Four challenges: internal democracy, dynastic succession, money and muscle power, meaningful choice.
• Under the anti-defection law, a legislator who changes party loses the seat.
• Candidates must file affidavits on assets and criminal cases.
• ‘The problem of bad politics can be solved by more and better politics.’

Traps to avoid

• NCERT says ‘these seven parties’ but there are six national parties (2023).
• The UPA governed 2004–2014, not ‘2004 to 2019’ as NCERT’s INC box says.
• NCERT’s regional-parties map is dated 13 April 2018 — AAP and NPP have since become national parties; TRS is now BRS.
• NCERT gives only one recognition test per tier; the Symbols Order has alternatives.
• ‘More than 750 registered parties’ is an old figure.
• ‘Higher in South Asia than the rest of the globe’ — but Tanzania tops the thermometer.
• No single-party Lok Sabha majority 1989–2009 — and none in 2024.
• Anti-defection: 52nd Amendment (1985); the 91st (2003) deleted the one-third split exception.
• Defection cases are decided by the Speaker/Chairman, subject to judicial review — not the President or ECI.
• ‘Political party’ appears in the Tenth Schedule — though Prelims 2025’s key says otherwise.
• The UPA was named after the 2004 results, not before the poll.
• Filing a false affidavit is an offence (Section 125A, RPA), though there is no routine verification.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Asked so far (kept here): China’s one-party system (1981); recognition of national parties and the ECI’s role (1988, 1991, 2001); which parties were national (1995); anti-defection — the split rule (1989), grounds (1992), the Tenth Schedule (1998, 2014), nominated members and time limits (2022), the Speaker and ‘political party’ in the Constitution (2025 — see the trap box); state funding (Goswami, 1997); oldest/newest parties (1993 — stored key looks wrong, see below).
• 1993 key: on the stored options — Conservative Party (1834), Democratic Party (1828), Republican Party (1854), INC (1885) — the last formed is the INC, option (d); the stored key (c) is likely wrong. Learn the dates, not the key.
• 2001 key: statements I–III are clearly true and only option (d) contains all three, so (d) is forced even though the 1999 party counts in statement IV are hard to verify.
• Likely next: Symbols Order recognition routes; national-party list and the 2023 notification; 91st Amendment details (15% cap, Article 361B); Section 29A/29C RPA; electoral bonds judgment (2024); Lily Thomas (2013); NOTA (2013); RTI and parties.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS2 — party system (2016 ‘transition full of contradictions’): phases (Kothari’s Congress system, the coalition era, debates after 2014 — attributed), State parties and federalism, the four NCERT challenges; balance with evidence, no party labels as verdicts.
• GS2 — anti-defection (2013 diminished role of MPs): purpose (1985), 91st Amendment, Kihoto Hollohan, the dissent problem NCERT names, reform proposals (limit to confidence and money votes — Goswami; independent tribunal — 2020 judgment).
• GS2 — national vs regional parties (2022): NCERT’s point that State parties strengthened federalism; arguments on centralisation and autonomy, with institutional examples.
• GS2 — electoral and party reforms (2017 ECI proposals): affidavits, criminalisation, party finance (electoral bonds judgment, 2024), internal democracy (Law Commission 1999), state funding (Indrajit Gupta 1998), and NCERT’s caution against over-regulation.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

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