New Delhi: India’s ruling party, Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), has not been part of the global association of centre-right political parties for at least six months, even as the organisation said that it would welcome its return to “full membership”.
Formed in 1983, the Munich-based International Democracy Union (IDU) counts former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, former US president George HW Bush, former French president Jacques Chirac, and former German chancellor Helmut Kohl as its founders.
The current chairman is the former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. The honorary advisory board is packed with former heads of government including Tony Abbot and John Howard from Australia; and UK’s Theresa May, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, and Liz Truss.
Comprising over 80 parties worldwide, the International Democrat Union (IDU) boasts members ranging from the UK Tories to the US Republican Party, and from the German Christian Democrats to Hungary’s Fidesz party and Israel’s Likud party. Notably, the IDU includes representation from South Asia, with the Maldivian Democratic Party, Nepali pro-monarchy Rastriya Prajatantra Party, and Sri Lankan United National Party among its members.
Nevertheless, the absence of the largest South Asian country’s representation is striking. This surprise stems from the fact that archived web pages dating back to June 2018 and September last year listed the BJP as a member.
However, two months later in November 2023, the BJP was conspicuously absent from the members’ page.
The Wire reached out to the IDU to inquire about the current membership status of the BJP and, if not a member, the rationale behind their departure.
In an emailed reply, the secretary general of IDU, Tina Mercep, replied that the IDU “enjoys a warm and open dialogue with the BJP and would welcome full membership of the BJP in our global network”.
Mercep, a Croatian politician, also wrote that BJP’s youth organisation remains a member of the youth wing of the IDU.
As per the IDU, the member political parties profess the “ideals of liberal democracy, freedom of the individual, and the need for economic growth to be based on individual initiative and free, competitive enterprise economies”.
Further, it says that through the IDU, the members could “exchange policy ideas, assist each other to win the political argument, and to win elections”.
