What is the number of political parties in the country?

New Delhi: India is a country with a multi-party system. There are eight national parties, more than 50 recognized state parties in the country. Apart from this, there are many unrecognized political parties in the country. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a group that studies and analyzes elections related to unrecognized political parties, has released a report. According to the ADR, the number of registered unrecognized political parties has more than doubled between 2010 and 2021. It has increased disproportionately in the year of Lok Sabha elections.
The newly registered political parties or the parties which do not obtain sufficient vote percentage required to become recognized party of a state in the assembly or Lok Sabha elections are considered as unrecognized parties. These include those parties which never contested elections after registration. The ADR said in the new report that the number of such parties was 1,112 in 2010, which increased to 2,301 in 2019 and this number reached 2,858 in 2021.

It is important to note that the number of these parties grew disproportionately, especially in the year leading up to the Lok Sabha elections, according to the report. It increased by more than 9.8 percent between 2018 and 2019, while it was 18 percent between 2013 and 2014. Annual audit reports of unrecognized parties and annual grant reports of only 160 or 5.72 percent are publicly available.

An analysis of 889 registered unrecognized parties related to the five states where elections are to be held this year, and only 90 or 10.12 per cent of such parties belonging to Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand, published the annual audit report on the website of the Chief Electoral Officer of the state. While this information is not available about unrecognized parties for 2019-20 in respect of Manipur and Goa.
The 90 unrecognized parties whose audit reports were available for Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab declared total income of Rs 840.25 lakh for 2019-20, while total expenditure declared as expenditure was Rs 876.76 lakh. In the year 2019-20, these unrecognized parties had spent Rs 36.51 lakh more than their total income. The Jan Rajya Party of Uttar Pradesh had declared the highest income for 2019-20, which was Rs 338.01 lakh, while the total expenditure of the party was Rs 332.16 lakh. Uttar Pradesh’s Anarakshit Samaj Party and Apna Dal (Sonelal) had declared the second highest income (Rs 157.68 lakh) and third highest income (Rs 76.05 lakh) respectively during this period.