RECOGNITION OF NATIONAL AND STATE PARTIES‌

The Election Commission registers political parties for the purpose of elections and grants them 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 granted by the Commission to the parties determines their right to certain privileges like allocation of the party symbols, provision of time for political broadcasts on the state-owned television and radio stations and access to electoral rolls.

Further, the recognized parties need only one proposer for filing the nomination. Also, these parties are allowed to have forty "star campaigners” during the time of elections and the registered- unrecognized parties are allowed to have twenty "star campaigners”. The travel expenses of these star campaigners are not included in the election expenditure of the candidates of their parties.

Every national party is allotted a symbol exclusively reserved for its use throughout the country. Similarly, every state party is allotted a symbol exclusively reserved for its use in the state or states in which it is so recognised. A registered-unrecognised party, on the other hand, can select a symbol from a list of free symbols. In other words, the Commission specifies certain symbols as 'reserved symbols’ which are meant for the candidates set up by the recognised parties and others as 'free symbols’ which are meant for other candidates.