India - Political Parties
| Aam Aadmi Party | AAP | Arvind KEJRIWAL |
| All India Trinamool Congress | AITC | Mamata BANERJEE |
| Bahujan Samaj Party | BSP | MAYAWATI |
| Bharatiya Janata Party | BJP | Jagat Prakash NADDA |
| Biju Janata Dal | BJD | Naveen PATNAIK |
| Communist Party of India | CPI | |
| Communist Party of India-Marxist | CPI(M) | Sitaram YECHURY |
| Dravida Munnetra Khazhagam | Muthuvel Karunanidhi STALIN | |
| Indian National Congress | INC | Mallikarjun KHARGE |
| Nationalist Congress Party | NCP | Sharad PAWAR |
| Rashtriya Janata Dal | RJD | Lalu Prasad YADAV |
| Shiromani Akali Dal | SAD | |
| Samajwadi Party | SP | Akhilesh YADAV |
| Shiromani Akali Dal | SAD | Sukhbir Singh BADAL |
| Shiv Sena | SS | Uddhav THACKERAY |
| Telegana Rashtra Samithi | TRS | K. Chandrashekar RAO |
| Telugu Desam Party | TDP | N. Chandrababu NAIDU |
| YSR Congress | YSRCP or YCP | Y.S. Jaganmohan REDDY |
| India has dozens of national and regional parties |
Most major Indian political parties share a broad consensus on the importance of deeper ties with Washington. Since the end of the Cold War, both the ruling right-of-center Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress Party have recognized the central role the US will play in India’s modernization. Nonetheless, of the two major parties, the BJP has traditionally felt less constrained by the legacy of nonalignment. This gives it greater room to pursue rapid strategic convergence with the US.
After a period of pronounced drift in India between 2011-14, the election of Modi as prime minister in 2014, with the first single party electoral majority in 30 years, raised hopes that New Delhi would return emphatically to the path of greater global engagement as well as structural economic reform.
Many obsevers deprecate India’s political parties, the way they function and the means party leaders adopt to maximize electoral support. Spme blame them for the ills seen in Indian society and political practice. Such an attitude is not unjustified. Yet observers cannot ignore the role parties have played in bringing about a massive democratic political transformation over the decades since independence. This transformation was by no means inevitable: most former colonies went through periods of political instability, military coups and authoritarian regimes, but India moved towards legally-based democratization. The mediating role political parties played in bringing about this democratic transformation in a relatively peaceful manner, in a short span of time and under conditions considered not very conducive to democratic development, cannot be underestimated.
In the decades following Independence, the plural and federal character of India’s polity quickly asserted itself. Within two decades of the first general elections, the dominance of the Congress party began to crack. A large number of new parties emerged, and many of them became ruling parties at the national or state level or both. In many states, the national parties had been marginalized or become adjuncts to their state-based rivals. This flux in the party domain and the proliferation of parties gave rise to coalition governments, which became a regular feature of Indian politics since the 1990s.
Frontline noted 13 February 2024 "the South’s pivotal role as a bulwark against the BJP’s anti-minority agenda. Nearly 15 years later, the significance of the southern States in resisting the exclusionary politics of the Sangh Parivar is evident. Despite concerted efforts by the RSS and its affiliates to polarise pockets of the South, the States remain steadfast. Several factors contribute to this resilience. Chief among them is the enduring influence of movements such as Communism and Dravidian ideology. Left-wing political parties, deeply rooted in select south Indian States, champion secularism and social justice as their fundamental tenets.,,. The region has always boasted a diverse religious landscape, with sizeable populations of Christians, Muslims, and other minorities. This diversity, in turn, has fostered a culture of acceptance that goes against religious majoritarianism."
The clearest thing about India's political funding system is that it is opaque to the public, with both politicians and electoral officers repeatedly and openly acknowledging their failure to achieve transparency. The opaque system breeds quid-pro-quo transactions and corruption, some of which have been uncovered by the Indian media.
Political parties in India are exempt from scrutiny of their past foreign fundings. They can receive political donations from Indians living abroad as well as foreign companies with subsidiaries in India. A controversial amendment to a law on foreign donations, with retrospective effect, was rushed through parliament by the government in March 2018 without any debate.
The key amendment to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, which in its previous version banned political parties from receiving foreign funding, drew criticism from activists. India's two main political parties - the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress Party - were found guilty of breaking the law by a Delhi court in 2014. In its ruling, the court had said that the two parties accepted funds from companies owned by London-listed mining group Vedanta Resources between 2004 and 2012.
In mid-February 2024, the Supreme Court of India struck down the electoral bonds scheme , which allowed donors to send unlimited funds to their parties of choice, and to do so anonymously. The tool was set up six years ago. Many have since called it unconstitutional, with the Supreme Court eventually agreeing and proclaiming it eroded people's right to information. The landmark ruling defies the stance taken by the government of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Even without electoral bonds, however, the system remains problematic. "While the proponents of political reforms were celebrating the Supreme Court judgment, we have gone back to the pre-electoral bonds system where 70% of all donations were in cash," S.Y. Quraishi, the former Chief Election Commissioner of India, told DW. "We are back to square one."
The 2024 election was shaping up to be India's most expensive ever, with rivaling campaigns and state expenses for organizing the election reaching a combined cost of $14.4 billion (€13.27 billion) according to the estimate by the Centre for Media Studies in New Delhi, which monitors political spending. The Election Commission requires all political parties to disclose direct contributions larger than 20,000 rupees ($241/ €222) in their annual reports. But donors are known to break up their contributions in cash sums below this threshold, which requires no disclosure at all. And this scheme accounts for the lion's share of political funding.
"The problem lies with those contributions which are below 20,000 rupees which nobody is talking about. There was a hue and cry about electoral bonds but these donations are also very problematic," said Shelly Mahajan, Head of the Political Party Watch at Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR). In a study spanning 11 years, ADR showed that over two-thirds of all funds received between 2004-2015 by national and regional parties were from "unknown sources" and hence could not be traced.
Local media has often reported how parties distribute alcohol, food, drugs, cigarettes and even direct cash to gain votes. Politicians also pay to gather crowds of thousands in rallies to portray strength and popularity. In the run up to the 2019 general elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI) seized drugs, alcohol and precious metals worth hundreds of millions of dollars from party members. "We found that money was even being taken in ambulances, milk tankers, cars and airplanes of police officers and ministers," Quraishi said.
The situation as a vicious cycle, where people with the power to reform election financing are the same one who are benefiting from the broken system. "There is a definite lack of political will," Quraishi said. "Parties have come and gone, governments have come and gone, and no one has even bothered to look at our proposals. If they brought in some reform, it was a disaster," he said. ADR head Verma agreed that reforms are unlikely unless politicians are forced. "They are all happy, they are making money," he said. "It's all about money."
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