Taking into account the recent Lok Sabha election results, the Election Commission of India (EC) has decided to review the ‘regional’ and ‘national’ status awarded to political parties. It will begin the exercise next month.
The poll body will assess the performance of each recognised regional and national party based on their results in two consecutive elections, an official aware of the developments told Hindustan Times.
The eligibility criterion was earlier limited to a party’s performance on a per-election basis, but the poll body decided to expand the purview to two consecutive elections (two general elections, two state elections or one general and one state elections) in 2016.
“If a party was given a regional or a national party status based on their results in 2014 (or later), then they won’t come up for review (now),” the official was quoted as saying in the report, on condition of anonymity.
Thus, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) will have to meet the criteria in the next election they face, given their poor performances in the 2019 general elections.
India has seven recognised national parties – the BJP, the Congress, the BSP, the CPI, the CPI(M), the NCP and the All India Trinamool Congress.
Recognition as a national or a State party ensures that the election symbol of that party is not used by any other political entity in polls across India. Other registered but unrecognised political parties have to choose from a pool of “free symbols” announced by the commission from time to time.
Besides, these parties get land or buildings from the government to set up their party offices. They can have up to 40 ‘star campaigners’ during electioneering. Others can have up to 20 ‘star campaigners’.
A political party becomes eligible to be recognised as a national party if it has won two percent of seats in Lok Sabha from at least three different states in the latest general election; or in a Lok Sabha or Assembly election it has polled six percent of the total valid votes in at least four states, in addition to winning four Lok Sabha seats; or it has been recognised as a state party in at least four states.
The 2016 amendment in the EC’s rule had come as a major reprieve for the BSP, the NCP and the CPI as they were facing the prospect of losing their national party status after their dismal performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
The EC had served them notices in 2014 on the issue.
Had the rule not been amended, Trinamool Congress would not have been recognised as a national party as it had not performed well in the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly polls and would have lost the state party status there.
(With inputs from Hindustan Times, PTI)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)