Over seven decades since first Lok Sabha polls, national parties count fell from 14 to 6
New Delhi: Fifty three political parties had contested the first Lok Sabha polls in 1951. The number of political parties today stands at over 2,500. However, the national party count has gone down to six from 14 in over seven decades.
Contesting the general elections in May to elect the 18th Lok Sabha will be six national parties. The journey of political parties all these years has been an interesting ride from mergers to the emergence of new players while some of them have ceased to exist.
A total of 53 political parties contested the first election, of which 14 were considered “national parties” while the rest were considered “state” parties.
According to the book “Leap of Faith”, published by the Election Commission of India to document journey of elections in India, prior to the 1953 polls as many as 29 political parties had demanded the status of a national party.
“A decision was made to grant the status to only 14 of them. However, the election results proved sobering for most of them and only four of them were permitted to retain the national status,” the book reads.
The four national parties by 1953 were the Congress, the Praja Socialist Party (formed following the merger of the Socialist Party and the Kisan Mazdoor Party), the CPI, and the Jana Sangh.
The parties which lost their national tag were Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha (HMS), All India Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), All India Scheduled Castes’ Federation (SCF), All India Forward Bloc (Marxist group) (FBL-MG) and the All India Forward Bloc (Ruikar group) (FBL-RG), Krishikar Lok Party (KLP), Bolshevik Party of India (BPI), and Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI).
The Socialist Party and Kisan Mazdoor Party had contested the first elections separately and they later merged to form the Praja Socialist Party.
The number of political parties reduced to 15 in the second elections in 1957 when the four national parties remained in fray. However, the next elections in 1962 saw 27 parties contesting and the number of national parties rose to six with the Socialist (SOC) and Swatantra (SWA) parties contesting the polls.
The Congress’s dominion persisted for a long time after the first general election, winning 11 of the 14 elections until 2014, when the tide turned in favour of the BJP.
The CPI formed the principal opposition in the next two Lok Sabha elections after the 1951 polls. However, in 1964, the Soviet and Chinese communist factions within the party split, giving rise to the CPI (Marxist). Thereafter, the new CPI(M) continued to secure more votes than the CPI in the country’s general elections.
“The Socialist Party had its roots in the Congress Socialist Party, a left-wing faction within the Indian National Congress formed by Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohiya and Acharya Narendra Dev which separated from the former shortly
after independence,” Pradeep Gupta, chairman of Axis India, told news agency.
