Family Controlled Political Parties: Decision Taking Or Decision Making

POLITICAL PARTIES IN INDIA

Family Controlled Political Parties: Decision Taking Or Decision Making

Classification of political parties in India is done into 3 groups (based on Election Commission of India data). Majority of the unrecognized registered parties are family controlled political parties.

New Delhi: Out of the 1700+ political parties registered with EC most of them are family controlled political parties. As on date, there are 6 national parties in India. Out of the same 4 are having hierarchy (INC, BJP, CPI, CPIM) and two are family centric (BSP of Mayawati & NCP of Sharad Pawar).

Most of the other parties are family/individual centric. The regional parties including TDP, TRS, DMK, AIADMK, JD-U, JD(S), Shiv Sena, BJD, BSP, SP, RLD etc., are all run by individual/family and they rarely have real hierarchy built into the party.

The decisions of the party chief in these cases may or may not be well accepted by the various cadres in the party. Sometimes, the over involvement of family members may also be a cause of unwanted mis-understandings in the party cadres.

One of the latest example can be taken from SP’s Tyagi. Tyagi has been the national general secretary of the party but on 23rd March he left SP to join RLD (of Ajit Singh). Tyagi mentioned that SP chief Mulayam has not been able to think beyond his native village Safai and the party extended step mother treatment to Tyagi and as such he is moving back to RLD where he served as a national general secretary for a period of 7 years and also won two times each as MLA & MP as well.

The scenario in hierarchy parties like INC, BJP, CPI, CPIM etc., the decision taking is totally different and has involvement of so many levels of cadres. Though the party chief will be able to dominate the decisions, it is treated more as a collective decision and hence are considered to be taken after due exercise.

BJP had faced so many disturbances within the party almost all of them got resolved within the party itself. There has been no major setback for the party at the state/central levels. Same is the case with the CPI & CPIM parties as well.

Person/family centric parties, on the other hand, like DMK, AIADMK, Shivsena tend to take decisions based on the moods of the party chief and the same may or may not gel with the cadres of the party.

Decisions by political parties can be taken as they deem fit as long as they don’t interfere in the administration but when it comes to public administration these decisions need to be taken with due care and careful consideration of various aspects related to the issues.