Now, national parties may be down to three

The Sunday’s elections results in Maharashtra and Haryana has redefined India’s political scene with the country set to have the lowest number of national political parties since Independence --- only three, one less than the number in 1957.

Updated on: Oct 21, 2014, 12:12:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The outcome of Maharashtra and Haryana elections will reduce the number of national political parties in the country to just three — the lowest since Independence.

Only the BJP, the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) will enjoy the national status. The BJP’s stunning win in Haryana and an impressive showing in Maharashtra have dashed the hopes of Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to retain their national party status.

“If you go by election (national and state) results, these parties will not be able to meet our conditions,” an Election Commission (EC) official said.

Political parties are required to poll a certain per cent of votes in both national and state elections and also have a stipulated number of seats in the Lok Sabha or assemblies or both to keep the coveted title.

Earlier, the least number of national parties was four, way back in 1957.

Losing national status is not just a loss of prestige or face, there are other problems as well. The NCP and the BSP may lose office space in the Capital.

The bigger worry, however, is they stand to lose monopoly over their party symbols — an elephant for the BSP and a clock for the NCP. The EC can issue the symbols to other parties or Independents.

In August, both the parties had requested the EC to withhold their de-recognisation until the Maharashtra and Haryana polls. They were hoping to improve vote share and retain national status.

They were reacting to an EC notice, asking them why they should not lose their national status following their poor performance in the Lok Sabha polls.

The NCP won six Lok Sabha seats, all in Maharashtra, while the BSP drew a blank.

For a political outfit to get the national status, at least four states have to recognise it as a political party.

For getting recognised, parties have to fulfil one of the many conditions laid out by the election watchdog.

They should either get at least 6% of the total votes polled in a state during the Lok Sabha poll or assembly election, or win a certain number of seats in either of the two Houses or a combination of both.

Before the Lok Sabha election, there were six national parties but after the BJP’s big win, the Communist Party of India, which won only one seat, was nudged out.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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