Will there be at least one Communist party in India qualified to be recognised as a national party when the country's Communist movement enters its centenary year in 2025? The jury is still out on the question. The upcoming parliament election poses the biggest existential challenge to the Indian Left in its electoral history since independence. It will be crucial for the national party status of CPI(M), the only remaining party of the Indian Left that currently figures among India’s six national political parties. CPI(M)’s performance in this election will largely decide if it will remain a national party by the time of the next general elections in 2029.

CPI was the only Left party other than the CPI(M) with national party status until the Election Commission of India (ECI) cancelled it last year after failing to fulfil the criteria following the 2019 parliament elections. The All India Trinamool Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) also lost their national status, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) newly made the grade.

CPI(M) may claim that the parliamentary path is only a temporary tactical step in its ideological and practical advances towards the people’s revolution, and hence, losing national status hardly matters. Moreover, only six of 63 registered Indian political parties have the status now; even strong opposition parties like the TMC and NCP don’t have it. Yet, losing such a clear benchmark of its electoral popularity is no small setback to the Left’s prestige, considering that the united CPI emerged as the second-largest party in independent India’s first-ever elections of 1951. It is also humiliating because next year marks the centenary of the CPI's formation in Kanpur in 1925. Adding insult to injury, the RSS, the Indian Left’s prime ideological adversary, which also coincidentally enters the centenary the same year, appears inching towards most of its original objectives after remaining in the political wilderness for a long period.

Can CPI(M) fulfil the three criteria required to retain its national party status after the current........

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