Political Parties

Political Parties: An Introduction

Parties are necessary to represent the people of a country.

They help to conduct elections and aid in organized functioning of the legislature.

Political parties reflect political divisions in a society and so they involve

partisanship.

A political party has three components: The leaders, the active members and the
keen followers.

Politics parties form a two-way link between the government and people and bring
them close to each other.

Types of Political Parties

There are three major types of party system in use in various countries Mono Party
System, Bi Party System, Multi Party System.

The Mono Party System is less expensive compared to other systems.

In a Bi System the party that gets the majority forms the government and the other
party forms oppositions.
A Multi Party System is a system in which several parties complete for power and
more than two parties have a reasonable chance of coming into power either on
their own or in alliances with others.

National and Regional Parties

India is a Federal democracy which has two kinds of political parties; Regional and
National.

A party that secures at least six percent of the total votes in Lok Sabha elections or
wins four seats in the Lok Sabha is recognized as a national party.

As per the classification of the Election commission in two thousand six, there are
six nationally recognised parties in India the Indian National congress, Bharatiya
Janata party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Communist Party of India- Marxist,
Communist Party of India, and the Nationalist congress Party

The recently added seventh party is the Rashtriya Janata Dal- (RJD)

The AIADMK or All India Anna Dravids Munnetra Kazhagam Shiromani Akali
Dal, TDP or Telgu Desam Party and Shiva Sena are some of the popular region
parties.

Challenges and Reforms

The four challenges faced by political parties are:

 Lack of Internal Democracy

  Dynastic succession
 Money and Muscle Power
 Absence of Meaning Choice

Some of the reform measures taken by the government are:

 Anti- defection Law

 Affidavit Requirement and
 Organisational Meeting for political parties

There are two other ways of reforming political parties.

 Through pressure Groups, Movements and the Media

 By Including Reforms in the Political Parties.