Political Parties |Meaning, Types, Functions, Examples, & Facts

अनुक्रम (Contents)

POLITICAL PARTIES

Political parties

MEANING:

A political party is a group of people who aim to attain power in the government through elections.

► A political party works with an objective to promote the collective good on the basis of some policies and programmes. They seek to implement these policies by winning popular support through elections.

A political party has the following three components:

The leaders
The active members
The followers

Political parties perform various functions which are as follows:

In most democracies, elections are fought mainly among the candidates put up by the political parties.
Parties put forward different policies and programmes and the voters choose from amongst them.
Parties play a decisive role in making laws for a country.
Parties form and run governments.
Parties that could not get majority form the opposition. They criticise government for its failure or wrong policies.
Parties shape public opinion. They raise and highlight issues.
Parties ensure people’s access to government machinery and also to welfare schemes implemented by the government.

► We need political parties because of the various functions performed by them. Also, democracy cannot exist without political parties.

Broadly, political party system can be divided into the following three categories:

Single (One) Party System
Bi-party (Two-party) System
Multi-party System

► A political party can be national or regional.

► National political parties are country-wide parties. These parties have their units in various states. These units follow the same policies, programmes and strategies that are decided at the national level.

► A party that secures at least 6% votes in Lok Sabha elections or Assembly elections in four states and wins at least four seats in the Lok Sabha, is considered and recognised as a National Party.

There are seven recognised parties in India as in 2018. These are as follows:

Indian National Congress (INC)
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)
Communist Party of India (CPI)
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)
All India Trinamool Congress (AITC)

► On the other hand, the party which secures at least 6% votes in the State Legislative Assembly and wins at least two seats is recognised and considered as a State Party.

► Most of the parties in India are classified by the Election Commission as ‘State Parties’. These parties are actively involved in state politics and are commonly referred to as ‘Regional parties’.

Political parties in our country are facing several challenges. Important among these are as follows:

Lack of internal democracy within parties.
Dynastic succession.
Money and muscle power.
No meaningful choice for the voters.

In order to face the challenges, political parties need to be reformed. The following measures were taken:

The Constitution was amended to prevent elected MLAs and MPs from changing parties, since many elected representatives were indulging in defection in order to become ministers or for cash rewards.
In order to reduce the influence of money power and muscle power (criminals), the Supreme Court of our country passed an order. Now it is mandatory for every candidate to file an affidavit giving details of his/her property and of criminal cases pending against him/her.
The Election Commission passed an order for the political parties to hold their organisational elections and file their income tax returns.

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.
The proportion of those who say their trust in political parties is ‘not much’ or ‘not at all’ is more than those who have some’ or ‘great’ trust.
Political parties are one of the least trusted institutions all over the world. Inspite of this, over the last three decades the proportion of those who report to be members of political parties or close to a political party has gone up in India.

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shubham yadav

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