Appendix I

Profile of political parties

A brief profile of some political parties that figured in the sample is

presented below:

Aam Aadmi Party

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) added uncertainty to the outcome of the

2014 election, offering itself as a national ‘third force’, an alternative

to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress Party. At the

centre of the AAP campaign, attracting public interest and media

coverage, was the party’s leader, Arvind Kejriwal. He projected an

image of himself as an ordinary citizen offended by political

corruption and an unresponsive political class. As the AAP National

Convenor, he made key decisions and directed the party through the

2014 elections. The electoral gains made by the party were limited,

and it won four seats and a 2% national vote share, yet the party set

out an agenda which was much discussed by Indian voters and the

media. The AAP helped make the 2014 election a national election that

paid attention to governance issues. Kejriwal presented himself as a

provider of political services to rival other party leaders. As he bid for

public support he argued that unlike existing parties he was uniquely

qualified to provide clean government. With regard to party systems,

Kejriwal needs to be understood as an entrepreneur because he

refused to accept existing patterns of party competition. Instead, he

advocated a new axis of party competition, giving the issue of

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corruption a new salience in electoral politics and using that as the

basis for political mobilisation. Kejriwal insisted that corruption was a

national problem. His framing of political issues was unusual as the

leaders of most of the many new parties that have been formed in

recent decades have worked with cleavages relevant to their own

state. He presented himself as an ordinary citizen offended by failures

of governance. He gave the appearance of being accessible to ordinary

voters and uninterested in making material gains. Kejriwal attempted

to personally embody a new style of politics that rejected elite

privileges and favoured responsive government. Aam Aadmi Party

(Common Man Party) formally launched on November 26, 2012

following differences between the activists Arvind Kejriwal and Anna

Hazare regarding whether or not to politicise the popular India

Against Corruption movement that had been demanding a Jan Lokpal

Bill since 2011. Hazare preferred that the movement should remain

politically unaligned while Kejriwal felt the failure of the agitation

necessitated a direct political involvement. The party's first electoral

test was in the 2013 Delhi legislative assembly election, from which it

emerged as the second-largest party, winning 28 of the 70 seats. With

no party obtaining an overall majority, the AAP formed a minority

government with conditional support from the Indian National

Congress. A significant part of its agenda was to quickly introduce the

Jan Lokpal bill in the Union Territory. It was clear after the election

that the other major political parties would not support this bill. Then,

the AAP government resigned after being in power for 49 days.

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Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM)

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) known as CPI(M) is a communist

party in India which emerged from the split from the Communist Party of

India in 1964. The CPI (M) is concentrated in the states of Kerala, West

Bengal and Tripura. As of 2013, CPI (M) heads the state government in

Tripura. It also leads the Left Front coalition of leftist parties. In 1965, the

CPM’s electoral strategy opened the party to internal conflict, however, as

extremists, arguing from an avowedly Maoist position, opposed participation

in elections and government in favor of armed struggle from the countryside

(Basu, 2000).

Naxalbari uprising. At this point the party stood at crossroads. There

were radical sections of the party who were wary of the increasing

parliamentary focus of the party leadership, especially after the

electoral victories in West Bengal and Kerala. Developments in China

also affected the situation inside the party. In West Bengal two

separate internal dissident tendencies emerged, which both could be

identified as supporting the Chinese line (Rodrigues, 2012). In 1967 a

peasant uprising broke out in Naxalbari, in northern West Bengal. The

insurgency was led by hardline district-level CPI (M) leaders Charu

Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal(Basu,2000). The hardliners within CPI(M)

saw the Naxalbari uprising as the spark that would ignite the Indian

revolution. The Communist Party of China hailed the Naxalbari

movement, causing an abrupt break in CPI(M)-CPC relations. The

Naxalbari movement was violently repressed by the West Bengal

government, of which CPI (M) was a major partner. Within the party,

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the hardliners rallied around an All India Coordination Committee of

Communist Revolutionaries. Following the 1968 Burdwan plenum of

CPI (M) (held on 5–12 April 1968), the Andhra Pradesh Coordination

Committee of Communist Revolutionaries, (AICCCR) separated

themselves from CPI(M). This split divided the party throughout the

country (Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). But notably in West Bengal,

which was the centre of the violent radicalist stream, no prominent

leading figure left the party. The party and the Naxalites (as the rebels

were called) were soon to get into a bloody feud. In Andhra Pradesh

another revolt was taking place. There the pro-Naxalbari dissidents

had not established any presence. But in the party organisation there

were many veterans from the Telangana armed struggle, who rallied

against the central party leadership. In Andhra Pradesh the radicals

had a strong base even amongst the state-level leadership. The main

leader of the radical tendency was T. Nagi Reddy, a member of the

state legislative assembly (Koteswara Rao, 2003). On 15 June 1968 the

leaders of the radical tendency published a press statement outlining

the critique of the development of CPI (M). It was signed by T. Nagi

Reddy, D.V. Rao, Kolla Venkaiah and Chandra Pulla Reddy. In total

around 50% of the party cadres in Andhra Pradesh left the party to

form the Andhra Pradesh Coordination Committee of Communist

Revolutionaries, under the leadership of T. Nagi Reddy (Basu, 2000).

However, the CPI (M) came into existence in the Indian politics,

playing a key role during 1989 and 2004 by supporting the

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governments at the Centre. On the national level they supported the

Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government,

but without taking part in it. The party is part of a coalition of leftist

and communist parties known in the national media as the Left Front

(Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). Upon attaining power in May 2004,

the United Progressive Alliance formulated a programme of action

known as the Common Minimum Programme. The Left bases its

support to the UPA on strict adherence to it. Provisions of the

Common Minimum Programme mentions to discontinue

disinvestment, massive social sector outlays and an independent

foreign policy. On 8 July 2008, Prakash Karat announced that left front

is withdrawing its support over the decision by the government to go

ahead on the United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation

Act. The left front had been a staunch advocate of not proceeding with

this deal citing national interests (Rodrigues, 2012; Basu, 2000).

Communist Party of India (CPI)

Since its inception in 1928, the Communist Party of India (CPI), closely tied

to the Communist Party of Great Britain, followed Moscow directives with

dutiful twists and turns. During the 1930s the party joined the nationalist

movement by entering the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and secured

leadership in the Socialist organization, particularly in the South, where they

gained effective control. With the expulsion from CSP in 1939, the

Communists carried with them many members of the CSP in the South

(Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). The Communists parted ways with the

Congress during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the CPI called for

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cooperation with the British considering the invasion as an imperialist war

(Rodrigues, 2012). Since the Congress refused to cooperate with the

Britishers and Communists, many Congress leaders went to jail. Utilising the

opportunity, the CPI recruited student, peasant, and labour organisations,

expanding its membership from 5,000 in 1942 to 53,000 by 1946

((Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). Although the CPI effectively gained

control of a number of mass organizations, its participation in the war effort,

its continued attack on Gandhi, and its support of the Muslim League

demand for Pakistan tainted the party as antinational and minimised its

influence. The CPI adopted a strategy to expand its base by being in alliance

with workers and peasants against the Congress leadership (Ramachandra

Guha, 2007). In 1948 P. C. Joshi was replaced as General Secretary by B. T.

Ranadive, in order to advance a more militant line. Under the new

leadership, the CPI took up a revolutionary line like strikes, sabotage, and

urban violence. Ranadive emphasized the Russian model of using the

working class as the instrument of revolution and discounted the peasant

uprising in the Telengana region of Hyderabad (Koteswara Rao, 2003). The

Andhra Communists, however, pushed for the adoption of a Maoist line of

revolution from the countryside and obtained a short-term victory for the

strategy of rural insurrection with the election of Rajeshwara Rao as General

Secretary in 1950. The party became increasingly isolated, party

membership declined, and in various states the CPI was outlawed. In the

early 1950s, however, the attitude of the Soviet Union toward the Nehru

government began to change. The CPI was officially advised to abandon its

revolutionary tactics. The policy shift was welcomed by those within the

party, notably P. C. Joshi, S. A. Dange, and Ajoy Ghosh, who favored

participation in the ensuing general elections (Hardgrave and Kochanek,

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2008). In 1951 the revisionist line gained control of the party with the

selection of Ajoy Ghosh as General Secretary of the party. Ghosh, led the

party towards constitutional communism. The CPI extended its full support

to all ‘progressive’ policies and measures of the Nehru government. The

party’s willingness to engage in parliamentary politics and to join other

parties of the left thinking in a democratic front led to the success of the

Kerala Communists in 1957, and the formation of the first democratically

elected Communist government under E. M. S. Namboodiripad (Basu, 2000;

Rodrigues, 2012). The Amritsar thesis, drafted by the party conference in

1958, set forth the nationalist credentials of the CPI: The Communist Party of

India decided to achieve full democracy and socialism by peaceful means.

The Amritsar thesis only clarified its stance to overcome fundamental

tensions within the party between the right and left, between those

favouring cooperation with the Congress and the ‘‘national bourgeoisie’’ and

those advocating revolutionary struggle for the defeat of the Congress

(Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). Its relationship to the Congress in strategy

and tactics posed a dilemma for the CPI. It was obliged, on the one hand, to

fulfil its ideological commitment to the international Communist movement

but, on the other, sought to retain a nationalist identity. The internal balance

of the CPI was soon threatened. In Kerala, sparked by the Education Bill,

widespread agitation was launched against the Communist government,

bringing central intervention and the proclamation of President’s Rule

(Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). The left saw it as patent that the Congress

would never allow serious socialist reform, but the fate of the Kerala

government only served to define more clearly the polarities emerging on

the Sino-Indian question. The Tibet uprising in 1959 and the CPI’s support

for Chinese actions had already brought popular reaction against the party in

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India. A serious rift within the party surfaced in 1962. One reason was the

Sino-Indian War, where a faction of the Indian Communists backed the

position of the Indian government, while other sections of the party claimed

that it was a conflict between a socialist and a capitalist state, and thus took a

pro-Chinese position. There were three factions in the party –

internationalists, centrists, and nationalists. Internationalists, including B. T.

Ranadive, P. Sundarayya, P. C. Joshi, Makineni Basavapunnaiah, Jyoti Basu,

and Harkishan Singh Surjeet, supported the Chinese stand. The nationalists,

including prominent leaders such as S.A. Dange, A. K. Gopalan (Jeffrey, 2010)

backed India. Centrists took a neutral view; Ajoy Ghosh was the prominent

person in the centrist faction. In general, most of Bengal Communist leaders

supported China and most others supported India. Hundreds of CPI leaders,

accused of being pro-Chinese, were imprisoned. Some of the nationalists

were also imprisoned, as they used to express their opinion only in party

forums, and CPI's official stand was pro-China.In response to the widespread

arrests of leftist Communist cadres, the CPI sought to reorganise state party

units under rightist control. Their actions served only to stimulate the

creation of parallel left structures outside the disciplinary organization of the

CPI. At the national council meeting in 1964 the left attempted, without

success, to oust party Chairman Dange. They came armed with a letter

allegedly written by Dange in 1924 that stated his offer to cooperate with the

British in exchange for his release from jail. Denouncing the letter as a

forgery, the council refused to consider the charges. The left and center, led

by Namboodiripad and Jyoti Basu, staged a walkout and appealed to the

party to repudiate Dange and the ‘‘reformist’’ line (Rodrigues, 2012). The

split became final when all signatories to the appeal were suspended from

the party. The split was inevitable in the party and the Communist Party of

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India (Marxist) (CPM) came into existence.During the period 1970–77, CPI

was allied with the Congress party. In Kerala, they formed a government

together with Congress, with the CPI-leader C. Achutha Menon as Chief

Minister. CPI is recognised by the Election Commission of India as a 'National

Party' (Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). To date, CPI happens to be the only

national political party from India to have contested all the general elections

using the same electoral symbol. In West Bengal it participates in the Left

Front. It also participated in the state government in Manipur. In Kerala the

party is part of Left Democratic Front. In Tripura the party is a partner of the

governing Left Front, having a minister. In Tamil Nadu it is part of the

Progressive Democratic Alliance. It is involved in the Left Democratic Front

in Maharashtra

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is a centre to centre left political

party primarily based in the state of Maharashtra, India. Its youth

wing is the Nationalist Youth Congress. NCP was formed on 25 May

1999, by Sharad Pawar, P. A. Sangma, and Tariq Anwar after they were

expelled from the Indian National Congress (INC) on 20 May 1999, for

disputing the right of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi to lead the party.[1] At

the time of formation, the party also absorbed Indian Congress

(Socialist), which traced its origins to anti-coalition partner in the

state of Maharashtra in alliance with INC. On 20 June 2012, Sangma

quit the NCP to contest in presidential polls.

Shiv Sena

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Shiv Sena as a regional party was founded on June 19, 1966 by Bal

Thackeray, a political cartoonist with a view to protecting the interests

of Maharashtrians The party originally emerged from a movement in

Mumbai demanding preferential treatment for Maharashtrians over

migrants to the city (Palshikar,2012). The Shiv Sena especially

attracted a large number of disgruntled and often unemployed

Marathi youth, who were attracted by Thackeray's policy of opposing

migrants (Golgate, 2014). In its early days, the Shiv Sena followed an

anti-South agenda and its slogan was "Pungi Bajao, Lungi Bhagao"

("Blow the flute, and drive the lungis or South Indians away"). Shiv

Sena cadres became involved in various attacks against the South

Indian communities, vandalizing South Indian restaurants and

pressuring employers to hire Marathis1. Although the party's primary

base is still in Maharashtra, it has tried to expand to other states

(Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). In 1970s, the party gradually moved

from solely advocating a pro-Marathi ideology, to one supporting a

broader Hindu nationalist agenda, as it aligned itself with the

Bharatiya Janata Party. The Sena started placing more weight on the

Hindutva ideology in the 1970s as the hallmark 'sons of the soil' cause

1
After Independence in 1947, states were formed on the basis of linguistic
region. Within the Bombay Presidency a massive popular struggle was launched
for the creation of a state for the Marathi-speaking people. In 1960 the presidency
was divided into two linguistic states, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Moreover,
Marathi-speaking areas of the erstwhile Hyderabad state were joined with
Maharashtra. Mumbai, in many ways the economic capital of India, became the
state capital of Maharashtra. More over, people belonging to the Gujarati
community owned the majority of the industry and trade enterprises in the city.
On the other, there was a steady flow of South Indian migrants to the city, and
who came to take over many white-collar employments.

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was weakening (Palshikar, 2012). The party has ruled the state in

coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from 1995–99. The

Sena is the opposition party in the state along with the BJP since 1999.

In July 2005 Narayan Rane, an important functionary of the party was

expelled from the party, which sparked internal conflict in the party

(Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2008). In December the same year Raj

Thackeray, Bal Thackeray's nephew, left the party and founded

founded a new party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Although

the MNS is a break-away group from the Shiv Sena, the party is still

based on Bhumiputra ideology. Raj Thackeray considers himself an

Indian nationalist (not just a regionalist) and claims that the Congress

is two-faced. Uddhav Thackeray, Thackeray's son had become the

party's leader in 2004, although Bal Thackeray continued to be an

important figurehead. After the demise of Bal Thackeray on 17

November 2012, Uddhav became the sole Pramukh (party leader).

However, Uddhav has refused to take the "Pramukh" title.

Peace Party

The Peace Party became the fifth largest political party of India's most

populous state,Uttar Pradesh, following the state legislative assembly

elections of 2012. It won four seats in those elections. The party was

founded by in February 2008 by Mohamed Ayub, a surgeon and

philanthropist. It represents people who are striving for betterment of

downtrodden people of India through political awareness and

participation in governance. The party was founded with a view to

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present a fresh alternative to people of all classes, especially dalits,

Muslims and the backward/oppressed classes, who have been mostly

used by other political parties of India as a tool to gain power. Initially,

it had impact in some pockets of Uttar Pradesh but now it is spreading

to other parts of India as well. The strategy of the Peace Party is to

bring together other like-minded parties and groups, such as

the Indian Justice Party, Lok Janshakti Party, Bhartiya Samaj Party,

Janvadi party and Nationla Lok hit Party into one forum. The party

organised Muslims and most backward communities and has gained

the power of over 70 per cent Muslim vote. The party has adopted an

open minded and broad view with regard to its policies and has

attracted people from all sections of society. The party is expanding its

activities to other regions of India, in just short span of 5 year such As

Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttrakhand, Delhi, Madhya Pardesh,

Rajasthan,Maharashtra Odisa, and Chhattisgarh. The Peace Party first

contested seats in the General election of India , 2009.When it came

ranked sixth by percentage of votes in a field that contained 124

national and regional parties. It had contested 21 of the 80 seats in

Uttar Pradesh. In the by-elections that took place in 2010

at Dumariyaganj andLakhimpur. It secured more votes than

the Samajwadi party and Indian National Congress. The Peace Party

contested around 208 Assembly seats in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh

assembly elections, where its obtained 2.35 per cent of the vote and so

ranked fifth by percentage of votes gained.

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All India Trinamool Congress

The All India Trinamool Congress or Trinamool Congress is a sub-

national state-level ruling political party in West Bengal. Founded on

January 1, 1998 as a breakaway faction of the Indian National

Congress, the party is led by its founder and current Chief Minister of

West Bengal Mamata Banerjee. After remaining with the INC for over

two decades, Mamata Banerjee formed her own party, the Trinamool

Congress which was registered with the Election Commission of India

during mid-December 1997. Ma Mati Manush (Mother, Motherland

and People) was a primarily slogan, coined by All India Trinamool

Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. The slogan became very popular in

West Bengal during 2011 assembly election. A song was also recorded

with the same title to glorify the theme. In the West Bengal state

assembly election, 2011, the Trinamool Congress led alliance that

included the INC and SUCI(C) alliance won 227 seats in the 294 seat

legislature. Trinamool Congress alone won 184 seats enabling it to

govern without an alliance. The party is the opposition party in

Manipur. In 2014 parliamentary elections, the party won a maximum

of 33 seats for parliamnet.

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD)

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh, whose party had once

dominated the political landscape of western Uttar Pradesh on the

basis of a combination of Jat and Muslim votes, said social consensus

in the largely agrarian belt has fallen apart, with beef being just a side

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issue was founded in late 1990s to carry out the legacy of Choudhary

Charan Singh. it contested elections in the early 2000 onwards. On 12

December 2011, RLD joined the United Progressive Alliance led

by Indian National Congress. The party contested on eight

constituencies in Uttar Pradesh in Indian general election, 2014 as per

an arrangement with UPA but lost on all of them. Party chief Ajit Singh

who was six term holder from Baghpat seat, lost to BJP candidate

Satya Pal Singh. His son Jayant Chaudhary, the incumbent MP from

Mathura, lost to BJP candidate Hema Malini too.

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