Political party internal democracy: EC responsibility?

• The Election Commission (EC) is the registering authority for all political parties in India.
• The EC monitors party functioning and ensures regular elections.
• The Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling states that the EC cannot interfere with the political process or deregister a party based on violation of these factors.
• The EC’s core mandate is to conduct elections for Parliament, State Legislatures, and the posts of President and Vice President of India.
• The EC’s performance in this mandate is questioned, with some arguing that the EC has deteriorated in its core job.
• The EC does its mandated tasks efficiently, but de-registration of parties will have different dimensions.
• Elections are challenged only through election petitions, and political acceptance of election results is beyond imagination for all democracies.
• The EC’s power to de-register parties is debated.

Political Parties and the EC’s Role in Elections

• The EC’s involvement in the internal process of de-registering political parties could lead to suspicion among political parties.
• The EC should maintain its distance from politics to avoid becoming politically entrapped.
• The discipline of political parties should come from the electorate, not the EC.
• The EC’s mandate is to oversee compliance with the Constitution and by-laws of political parties.
• The EC’s intervention in the lack of democracy issue, such as rejecting the YSRCP proposal to make Jagan Mohan Reddy the party president, is not within its mandate.
• The EC’s symbols order, 1968, applies four tests when there is a split: adherence to the party Constitution, majority of the party organization, majority of the legislature wing, or by-laws.
• The only test that is applicable to the summary inquiry is the number of legislatures with the splinter group.
• The EC should have a high credibility and an objective way of making decisions, as they have been successful in doing so.