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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  The importance of the surname in Indian politics
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The importance of the surname in Indian politics

More than 150 Lok Sabha members have a family background in politics, and over 250 other members have ‘no significant family background’ in politics

The Indian National Congress, which is the single largest party, has the largest number of MPs—78 out of 208—with a politician as a family member. Photo: Hindustan Times (Hindustan Times)Premium
The Indian National Congress, which is the single largest party, has the largest number of MPs—78 out of 208—with a politician as a family member. Photo: Hindustan Times (Hindustan Times)

Over 150 members of Lok Sabha have followed their family members into politics, according to data put up on The India Site, a website associated with British historian Patrick French’s book India: A Portrait.

But, according to the website which has put up data on family backgrounds of members of the lower House of Parliament, over 250 other members have “no significant family background" in politics.

The site doesn’t say how these MPs got into politics.

Table 1 shows the broad categories of political origins into which The India Site classifies MPs, with “inducted" referring to professionals who were brought into their parties at the parties’ behest.

Next, we will look at a party-wise break-up of the 156 members of Parliament who have family background in politics. To provide context, we will compare them with the total number of members representing their party in Parliament.

Table 2 has the party-wise break-up of these parliamentarians.

As expected, the Indian National Congress, which is the single largest party, has the largest number of MPs—78 out of 208—with a politician as a family member. Surprisingly, the number of “family politicians" from the second largest party the Bharatiya Janata Party is comparatively low (about 20%).

All five MPs from the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) have a family background in politics while seven out of th

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Published: 05 Sep 2013, 11:19 PM IST
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