YPOST

Fragmandate

(A story of continuous rise and mandate share of regional parties)

The first ever general election was held in 1951 in India; if we look at the election commission report we will find 54 political parties participating in the election though the government was more or less under one political party’s ruling till ’67 general election; where first flame and sense of regional politics was seen as Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) won as many as 25 seats in Tamilnadu. This was just the start; Telugu Desam Party (TDP) became second majority in 8^th loksabha in 1984 with telugu sentiment from southern Andhra Pradesh. Now standing in 2014 we have 1616 parties registered under Election Commission of which 6 are national parties and the others are clearly regional political parties. Several factors have been responsible for the emergence of regional political parties in India. The presence of distinct cultural, ethnic, religious, linguistic and caste groups within India has greatly helped the process of growth of regional parties. Religious factor, regional imbalances, anticentralism, political splits etc. are other factors responsible for the emergence of regional political parties in India. Now if we look at the problems of having so many regional parties we will find there is a direct impact on mandate in every election. Many of the major power brokers in the contemporary Indian political parties hail-regional as the former Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee. Looking at them, it is not hard to believe that times have changed. Lets look at our last poll results; INC (Indian National Congress) was the main political party to form the government but they actually got 28.55% of total vote and the opposition leading party BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) got 18.80% of vote that means other 52.65% wanted neither INC nor BJP to rule the country and a huge share of this goes actually to the regional parties who play with local or regional issues and sentiments and has very less to contribute towards the nation building. The share of votes won by regional parties cracked the 50 percent for the first time in 1996. Thereafter, the engine sputtered a bit. In 1999, the share of regional parties vote dropped to 48 percent. In 2004, their share of voice crept up to 51 percent, the same level it had been eight years earlier, before rising slightly in the 2009 elections.

Moreover, the worst-case scenario in which the rise of regional actors directly threatens the status of national players gives the possibility that regional parties can also affect the other. In winner-take-all electoral system, where victories are possible with a small minority of votes in a constituency, the increased levels of political competition have led to greater fragmentation of the vote. 

India In 2009, for example, less than a quarter of the constituencies were won with a majority of votes. The net result was regional parties often crowd out other rival regional parties. See, for example, the electoral impact of party Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which votes away from its key regional rival, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. And competition between upstart and established regional parties in Andhra Pradesh Telugu redounded to the benefit of the Congress Party. The more fragmented vote affected the share of seats won by regional parties in the Lok Sabha elections. At present time, regional parties occupy 41 per cent of the seats, the same share, they took in 1998. It is actually a decrease from the previous two election cycles. Vote share of regional parties reached its highest level in 2009 (53%), but the share of the seats allocated to regional parties decreased due to fragmentation, suggesting that the proliferation of regional parties risk cannibalising the share of vote of "non national parties". One of the ways which have believed that regional parties threaten the national parties was to become full-fledged national actors. However, this fear did not come to pass, because even the most important regional parties have struggled to spread their regional ranking in national success. For example, the elections General 2009, Bahujan Samaj Party of Mayawati has sent in 500 of the 543 constituencies, candidates across the India (either by the way, this is more than any other p

arty). However, the Group took home only 21 seats - all in his stronghold of Uttar Pradesh. In fact, the Bahujan Samaj Party had not even a competitor in most of the districts where it entered the fray; its candidates finished among the groups of top two in 72 total. Compare this with the Congress, which has challenged the 440 seats, won 206 and was a finisher of first two in 350 seats across the country. The BJP bag 116 seats and finished second in another electoral district of 110.

-Soumendu Adhikary 

(PG 1)M.Sc Media