RADHARAO F
GRACIAS
The country was ruled for the first 30 years by the Indian National Congress, as a single party. Once the Congress began to lose its mojo, the Janata Party came into being in 1977, only to disintegrate as its disparate components began to pull in different directions. The first century of the third millennium is witnessing the near total eclipse of the Congress and emergence of the BJP as the fulcrum of power around which its voiceless allies rotate. Both the Congress and BJP have reduced the concept of the “Union of States” to a mere statement in the Constitution. We have constant complaints by regional parties of step-motherly treatment in the allocation of Central funds to their states and unconstitutional interventions in the matter of governance.
The Congress is effectively an appendage of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The BJP too is similar, except that it is an appendage of the RSS. Both parties function under the remote control of these entities. All attempts at forging a third national party have failed for several reasons, including the refusal of regional parties to subsume their identities into a national party, and with valid reasons too. So the need is for an all India formation that will transcend the country and still simultaneously allow the regional parties to function and thrive. And there is a constitutional way of achieving this purpose, as detailed below.
The way out is to circumvent the current party system and create a party with duality at the national and State level. It can be achieved by simply registering a new party, called the National Federal Party (NFP) (or any other name) under Sec 29 A of The Representation of the People Act. The party will have membership and an Executive just like other parties but shall also have Associate Membership like corporate members in companies. Such associate membership may be formal (or informal if the Election Commission raises objections, as it seems to have become an appendage of the BJP too).
The party constitution shall have a provision for creating a General Council in consultation with and including nominees of the associate members, which shall be the policy making body of the party.
The NFP shall contest elections only to the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. The Associate members shall continue to contest elections but only to the Assemblies of States, on their own policies, programmes and symbols. The Associate Members shall select the candidates to be fielded in the elections to Parliament from their States and recommend these names to be fielded by the NFP in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha elections. In States where NFP does not have Associate Members, it may select and field candidates on its own.
As a result the NFP will have candidates all over the country contesting on its own symbol, thus filling a vacuum, and provide the voters with a feasible political organisation and little range for individual constituents to move away, as happens with alliances. At the same time, the regional parties will retain their independence with no scope for some High Command from distant Delhi to decide and dictate. The regional parties so entwined with sister regional parties in other States under a common umbrella will be an indomitable force that so called national parties may not be able to play around with, as they presently do. The parties will jointly campaign for national and assembly elections. It will create a win-win situation for both formations. That would be a true federal structure.
The constant complaint of discrimination by States against the Centre in respect of devolution of funds to the States and other aspects will also be addressed as the State parties will have a control on the policies of the NFP through the General Council and MPs fielded by it on the NFP ticket. Besides, the NFP will be dependent on its State associates to get its MPs elected. The voters will have a cohesive organisation reflecting the aspirations of every State.
I would visualise that parties like the Samajwadi Party UP, RJD Bihar, JMM Jharkhand, TMC West Bengal, BJD Odisha, TRS Telangana, YSR Congress Andhra Pradesh, DMK (Tamil Nadu) Janata Dal (Karnataka) Nationalist Congress/Shiv Sena Maharashtra, UDF formation in Kerala, parties in North East India and others, contesting together for parliament on a single party ticket will be a formidable rival to the national parties that run and ruin the country today.
It would be appropriate if genuine patriots and stalwarts like Adv Prashant Bhushan, Psephologist Yogendra Yadav, Political strategist Prashant Kishore and similar others seriously consider such a formation. Considering the diverse and multi ethnic-cultural-linguistic nature of the country is it not time to move the leadership of the country from the West to the East in true federal spirit?
Such a party will finally fulfil the mandate Article 1 of the Constitution which proclaims ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States’. Likewise the National Federal Party shall be a Union of State Parties that will protect and project the myriad interests of the States that constitute the Union.
(Radharao F Gracias is a senior Trial Court Advocate, a former Independent MLA, a political activist, with a reputation for oratory
and interests in history
and ornithology)