The Election Commission’s (EC) decision on Monday to derecognise three national parties based on their performance in recent elections has precedent all the way back to the first-ever general elections of independent India in 1951-’52. As per the EC’s report on the first elections, there were 14 national parties before the elections. Those were the All India Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the Bolshevik Party of India, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Forward Bloc (Marxist Group), the Forward Bloc (Ruikar Group), the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, the Indian National Congress, the Krishikar Lok Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party of India, the Akhil Bharatiya Ram Rajya Parishad, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the All India Scheduled Caste Federation, and the Socialist Party. But, after the results, only four found themselves retaining the national tag. 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. “Prior to the elections, as many as 29 political parties demanded the status of ‘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. Thus, on February 6, 1953, only four were permitted to retain that status,” reads the EC’s book, Leap of Faith: Journey of Indian Elections, released last year. Over the years, many parties have ceased to exist or have merged with others. The CPI was among the three that lost its national party status on Monday after the EC’s review of its poll performance in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 2021 Assembly polls. The EC decided on Monday to revoke the national status of the CPI, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the All India Trinamool Congress and upgraded the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) from a state party to a national one. At present, there are six national parties: the BJP, the Congress, the AAP, the CPI (Marxist), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP); and the National People’s Party (NPP), which was recognised as a national party in 2019. For a political party, recognition as a national party brings certain perks, including reservation of their symbol in elections, more copies of the electoral roll, and land for an office in Delhi.
