Last week, I wrote a blog on Indian Polity where I mentioned national and state-level political parties, and what are the criteria for getting recognition as a political party from the Election Commission of India. We have 9 national-level and 55 state-level parties. Now, why have so many political parties mushroomed in the country? To find the answer to this question we have to go back into the history of India after independence.
If I recall correctly, at the time of independence there were two major political parties in the country, the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Communist Party of India (CPI), and many of the political parties which emerged afterward are mainly offshoots of these parties only. Most of the leaders who participated in the freedom struggle were associated with Congress in one capacity or other. Here are a few incidents which led to the formation of new political parties:
1 Shayma Prasad Mukherjee, was a minister in PM Nehru’s cabinet, but on the Kashmir issue, he did not agree with Nehru and he came out of the cabinet, this happened in the early 1950s. He founded a new political party which was known as Bhartiya Jan Sangh (which is the earlier version of the present political party known as Bhartiya Janata Party or BJP).
2 Leaders like JP Kriplani, Minoo Masani, C Rajagopalachari, Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, were not happy with the functioning of Nehru’s govt, and they started a political party known as ‘Swatantra Party’, and this party fought national elections in the late 50s and 6os.
3 In the late 60s, after Indira Gandhi became PM, at that time K Kamraj was the president of the Congress party. The senior leaders of the party wanted Indira Gandhi to run the govt as per the direction of party bosses, to which she refused to comply. As a result at the time of the 1969 Presidential election, she did not agree with the official candidature of N Sanjiva Reddy as the candidate for the President’s post, instead, she and her supporters backed VV Giri who stood as an independent candidate. VV Giri won the election and the Congress party broke, and at that time two factions were known as Congress (R) and Congress (O), where R stood for the Ruling faction and O for Organisation. In the later years, they became Congress (I) and Congress (S) respectively.
4 In the mid-60s, even the Communist party split, and their two factions were known as the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).
5 When the elections happened after the emergency was lifted in 1977, the Janata Party was created, which happened after many parties like Jana Sangh, Lok Dal, Socialist Party, and many more merged and formed this new party. Both the factions of the Communist parties also supported this party. But this experiment failed, and most of the constituent parties came back to their original forms. Bhartiya Jan Sangh became Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), and many factions of Janata Dal emerged on the political scene.
6 After the 1989 elections, when Rajiv Gandhi lost the majority, a new political bloc known as Janata Dal was formed under the leadership of VP Singh and Devi Lal. This also broke within one year, when Chandrashekhar ditched then PM VP Singh and became PM with the support of Congress (I), who by that time also came to be known as Real Indian National Congress (INC), as all other factions of Congress lost their political importance. Presently there are many factions of Janata Dal (JD), but only two factions are in limelight and they are Janata Dal-United (JD U) which is mainly operating in Bihar under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, and other is Janata Dal-Secular (JD S) which is mainly in Karnataka under the leadership of HD Dewe Gowda.
7 In the 80s Kanshiram formed the Bahujan Samaj Party, which was founded with the intention of looking after the welfare of Dalits and other downtrodden communities. Presently this party is headed by Maya Devi, and it is active in Uttar Pradesh (UP).
8 After Sonia Gandhi took command of the Congress party, a breakup group emerged which was formed by Sharad Pawar, NP Sangma, and Tariq Anwar, who were against Sonia Gandhi becoming PM in the future (at that time), and they formed Nationalist Congress Party (NC). This party is now mainly operating in Maharashtra under the leadership of Sharad Pawar. Later Mamata Banerjee also came out of the Congress and formed Trinamool Congress (TMC), presently this party is ruling the state of West Bengal, and has a presence in a few other northeastern states.
9 Latest party to enter the political Arena is Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), this party came into existence in the early part of 2013, after the anti-corruption crusade led by Anna Hazare took the limelight in 2012. Arvind Kejriwal, and his associate who founded this party were associated with Anna Hazare in that crusade. At present, most of the other founders have left the party, and now the party is being run by Arvind Kejriwal. They are the ruling party in the states of Delhi and Punjab, and also have a presence in a few other states.
These are the incidents of how the major political parties came into existence after independence. Although Congressmen claim that they are 135 years old party, the fact is that the present Congress party came into existence in 1980, when Indira Gandhi came back to power after the debacle of 1977.
There are so many regional political parties, and basically, most of these parties are family-based parties, such as National Party (Jammu and Kashmir), Akali Dal (Punjab), Biju Janata Dal (Odisha), DMK (Tamil Nadu), Samajwadi Party (UP), Shiv Sena-UBT ( Maharashtra), YSR Congress (Andhra Pradesh), Bhartiya Rashtriya Samiti (Telengana), and many more. I may write about these regional parties in the near future.
Waiting for your views on this blog.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
8th March 2022