State Party Status by Election Commission of India | 30 Nov 2019

Recently, the Jannayak Janta Party of Haryana has been granted the status of a recognised State party and has been allotted the symbol of “key” by Election Commission of India.

• Other two recognised state parties of Haryana are Haryana Janhit Congress and Indian National Lok Dal.

Key Points

• Political parties are registered by the election commission for the purpose of elections and granted recognition as national or state parties on the basis of their poll performance.
  
  • The other parties are simply declared as registered-unrecognised parties.
• The recognition determines their right to certain privileges like allocation of the party symbols, provision of time for political broadcasts on television and radio stations and access to electoral rolls.
• Every national party and every state party is allotted a symbol exclusively reserved for its use throughout the country and the states respectively. In other words, the Commission specifies certain symbols as ‘reserved symbols’ which are meant for the candidates set up by the recognised parties.

Conditions for Recognition as a State Party

A party is recognised as a state party in a state if any of the following conditions is fulfilled:

• If it secures 6% of the valid votes polled in the state at a general election to the legislative assembly of the state concerned and in addition, it wins 2 seats in the assembly of the state concerned or
• If it secures 6% of the valid votes polled in the state at a general election to the Lok Sabha from the state concerned and in addition, it wins 1 seat in the Lok Sabha from the state concerned or
• If it wins 3% of seats in the legislative assembly at a general election to the legislative assembly of the state concerned or 3 seats in the assembly, whichever is more or
• If it wins 1 seat in the Lok Sabha for every 25 seats or any fraction thereof allotted to the state at a general election to the Lok Sabha from the state concerned or
• If it secures 8% of the total valid votes polled in the state at a General Election to the Lok Sabha from the state or to the legislative assembly of the state. This condition was added in 2011.

Source: TH