The Bharatiya Janata Party is among the major political parties in India. It is the country's largest political party in terms of representation in the national parliament and state assemblies and the world's largest party in terms of primary membership having 100 million registered members as of April 2015. The BJP is a right-wing party, with close ideological and organizational links to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The official ideology of the BJP is "integral humanism", first formulated in 1965. The party expresses a commitment to Hindutva, and its policy has historically reflected Hindu nationalist positions. The BJP advocates social conservatism and a foreign policy centred on nationalist principles. Its key issues have included the abrogation of the special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya and the implementation of a uniform civil code. However, the 1998–2004 NDA government did not pursue any of these controversial issues. It instead focused on a largely neoliberal economic policy prioritizing globalization and economic growth over social welfare.

Kharge started his political career as a student union leader while in the Government College, Gulbarga when he was elected as the General Secretary of the students' body. In 1969, he became the legal advisor to the MSK Mills Employees' Union. He was also an influential labour union leader of Samyukta Majdoor Sangha and led many agitations fighting for the rights of labourers. In 1969, he joined the Indian National Congress and became President of the Kalaburagi Town Congress Committee.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is the third largest national political party in India. BSP was formed mainly to represent Bahujans (literally meaning "People in majority"), referring to people from the Scheduled Castes(SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Castes (OBC), as well as religious minorities that together consist of 85 percent of India's population but still divided into 6000 different castes.

The party claims to be inspired by the philosophy of Gautama Buddha, B. R. Ambedkar, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, Narayana Guru, Periyar E. V. Ramasamy and Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj. It was founded by Kanshi Ram in 1984, who named his protégée Mayawati as his successor in 2001.

CPI is the communist party in India. There are different views on exactly when it was founded. The date maintained as the foundation day by the CPI is 26 December 1925. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), separated from the CPI, believes it was founded in 1925. CPI is recognised by the Election Commission of India as a 'National Party'.

To date, CPI happens to be the only national political party of India to have contested all the general elections using the same electoral symbol. On the national level, they supported the Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, but without taking part in it. The party is part of a coalition of leftist and communist parties known in the national media as the Left Front.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (abbreviated CPI(M)) is a communist party in India. The party emerged from a split from the Communist Party of India in 1964. The CPI(M) was formed at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of India held in Calcutta from 31 October to 7 November 1964. As of 2018, CPI(M) is leading the state government in Kerala. It also leads the West Bengal Left Front and Left Front (Tripura). As of 2016, CPI(M) claimed to have 1,048,678 members.[6] The highest body of the party is the Politburo.

The CPI(M) is heading one state government. The Left Front government headed by the CPI(M) was uninterruptedly in power in West Bengal since 1977 upto May 2011. In Kerala, it has been in and out of office. Currently, the Left Democratic Front headed by the CPI(M) is in opposition. In Tripura, the CPI(M) was first elected to office in 1977. Though it lost the subsequent election due to large scale rigging, in all elections since 1988 it has been voted to office. Though uneven, the CPI(M) has representation in eight state legislative assemblies.

Sharad Pawar, P. A. Sangma, and Tariq Anwar formed NCP on 25 May 1999, after they were expelled from the Indian National Congress (INC) on 20 May 1999, for disputing the right of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi to lead the party. At the time of formation, the party also absorbed Indian Congress (Socialist), which traced its origins to anti-coalition partner in the state of Maharajarashtra in alliance with INC. On 20 June 2012, Sangma quit the NCP to contest in presidential polls.

All India Anna Dravidian Progress Federation [AIADMK] is a state political party in the states of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, India. It is currently in power in Tamil Nadu. It is a Dravidian party founded by M.G. Ramachandran (popularly known as MGR) in 1972 as a breakaway faction of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

Since 1989, AIADMK is headed by J. Jayalalithaa, the current Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. The party headquarters is in Royapettah, Chennai, and was gifted to the party in 1986 by its former leader Janaki Ramachandran, wife of MGR. The party headed its coalition to win the Tamil Nadu assembly election 6 times to head the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.

The Janata Dal (United)'s origins go back to before the 1999 General Elections. A faction led by then Karnataka Chief Minister J. H. Patel had lent support to the National Democratic Alliance, leading to the split in the Janata Dal & formation of Janata Dal (Secular) under H. D. Deve Gowda, who wanted to remain equidistant from both national parties; and Janata Dal under Sharad Yadav.

The Janata Dal (United) was formed with the merger of the Sharad Yadav faction of the Janata Dal, the Lok Shakti Party and the Samata Party. On 30 October 2003, the Samata Party led by George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar merged with the Janata Dal. The merged entity was called Janata Dal (United) with the arrow symbol of Janata Dal (United) and the green and white flag of the Samata Party. The uniting force is believed to be common opposition to Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar especially after the RJD welcomed Samata Party rebels like Raghunath Jha into the party.

The Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) (abbreviated as LJP (RV)) is an Indian political party formed in 2021 under the leadership of Chirag Paswan. Election Commission of India froze the symbol of erstwhile main Lok Janshakti Party and allotted new name and symbol to both factions. It is now one of two separate factions - the other being the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (translation: National People's Party) is an Indian political party, based in the northern state of Bihar. The party was founded in 1997 by Lalu Prasad Yadav. The mass base of the party has traditionally been Yadavs and Muslims, two large and relatively politically active segments of Bihar's population.

In 2008, RJD received the status of the recognized national level party following its performance in north-eastern states. RJD was derecognized as a national party on 30 July 2010. In the March 1998 national elections, RJD won 17 Lok Sabha seats from Bihar but failed to make significant headway in any other state. Later that year, the party formed an alliance with Mulayam Singh Yadav Samajwadi Party as an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party secular coalition but the coalition failed in garnering any widespread support.

Samajwadi Party (SP; translation: Socialist Party), founded on 4 October 1992 ) is a political party in India headquartered in New Delhi and the largest recognised state party of the country. Based in Uttar Pradesh, a northern state in India, it describes itself as a democratic socialist party. The Party was one of several parties that emerged when the Janata Dal (People's League) fragmented into several regional parties. Former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav, leads the party after he was chosen the President by the National Convention held on 1 January 2019.

The Samajwadi Party is primarily based in Uttar Pradesh State. It has contested Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections around the country, though its successes have been mainly in Uttar Pradesh. In the 2012 legislative assembly elections of Uttar Pradesh, party registered a landslide victory with a clear majority in the House, thus enabling it to form the government in the state. This was expected to be the fifth term of Mulayam Singh Yadav as Chief Minister of state, but he surprised everyone by selecting his son, Akhilesh Yadav, to be the new chief minister (the youngest ever). It became official on 15 March. It was also the first time that SP was head of the UP government for a full term of 5 years.

Shiv Sena is an Indian far-right regional political party. Its ideology is based on pro-Marathi ideology and Hindu nationalism (Hindutva), founded on 19 June 1966 by political cartoonist Bal Thackeray. The party originally emerged from a movement in Mumbai demanding preferential treatment for Maharashtrians over migrants to the city. It is currently headed by Thackeray's son, Uddhav Thackeray. Members of Shiv Sena are referred to as Shiv Sainiks.

Although the party's primary base is still in Maharashtra, it has tried to expand to a pan-Indian base. In the 1970s, it gradually moved from advocating a pro-Marathi ideology to one supporting a broader Hindu nationalist agenda, as it aligned itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The party started taking part in Mumbai (BMC) Municipal elections since its inception. In 1989, it entered into an alliance with BJP for Lok Sabha as well as Maharashtra assembly elections, the latter of which was temporarily broken in October 2014 Assembly elections but it was undone soon and Shiv Sena became part of the BJP government in Maharashtra in December 2014.

It has been a coalition partner in the National Democratic Alliance since 1998, including the Vajpayee Government during 1998–2004 and the present Narendra Modi Government. The party has a powerful hold over the Bollywood film industry. It has been referred to as an "extremist", "chauvinist", as well as a "fascist party". Shiv Sena has been blamed for the 1970 communal violence in Bhiwandi, the 1984 Bhiwandi riot and violence in the 1992-1993 Bombay riots.

YSR Congress Party or Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (literally means: Youth, Labour and Farmer Congress Party) is a regional political party in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in India. It was founded by Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy, the son of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy(popularly known as YSR) in 2011. Both YSR and Jaganmohan Reddy (called Jagan by his followers) had been members of the Indian National Congress. Jagan was also elected as the national president of the party.