World’s 7th Largest Political Party is ADMK? Where is the source of the data from??
A piece of information is being spread on social media that BJP is in first place and AIADMK is in the 7th place among the top ten political parties with the highest number of members globally. DMK is not included in this list. The AIADMK members are proud to post this on their social media pages and also to speak the same in debate programs. The media has also reported the same with no proper research. How reliable is this list? Which company published this data? Let’s start this article with these questions.
The Twitter page ‘World Update‘ has published a list claiming to be based on the number of members of political parties in the world. Among them, Bharatiya Janata Party is in the first place and the Chinese Communist Party is in the second place of the largest political party list. Following that, the Indian Congress Party is in the fourth position and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is in the 7th position.
புரட்சித் தலைவரால் தோற்றுவிக்கப்பட்டு, மாண்புமிகு அம்மா அவர்களால் வளர்க்கப்பட்டு, இன்று மாண்புமிகு கழகப் பொதுச்செயலாளர் @EPSTamilnadu அவர்கள் தலைமையில் இந்தியாவின் மாபெரும் மக்கள் இயக்கமாக உயர்ந்து நிற்கும் அனைத்திந்திய அண்ணா திராவிட முன்னேற்றக் கழகம் உலகத்தின் 7வது மிகப்பெரிய… pic.twitter.com/mAqRjYdPVZ
— AIADMK (@AIADMKOfficial) June 26, 2023
This information was posted not only on AIADMK’s official Twitter page but also by AIADMK members including former Minister SP Velumani. And the spokesperson of the party, Jawahar Ali, mentioned the same information in a debate program and spoke about it proudly.
Wikipedia as its source
The World Update report does not provide any information on what the study was based on or the data source used to list the political parties. Its website was also launched just a year back in 2022. There is no information about who manages it and where it is located.
World Update quoted ‘Times of India’ as its source after many people, including the editor of Youturn, raised questions about it.
When searching for the details on the TOI website, an article is found published in April 2022. It lists the top 10 political parties in the world. We noticed a difference between the order of parties in this list and the one listed in World Update tweet. This ensures that the data mentioned by World Update is not taken from the Times of India.
Before checking the source of the World Update list, we searched to find the source of the list published by the Times of India. Wikipedia is cited as a source at the bottom of that list.
Next, we looked at the source of the data published by World Update. Wikipedia has a list of the largest political parties. It can be seen that the ranking of the parties in it is the same as the ranking published by World Update. A perusal of Wikipedia’s list reveals that it does not collect data in any specific time frame.
The data from a news report dated 2019 is used to rank BJP in the first place and the data from a news report dated 2022 is used to rank the Chinese Communist Party in the second place. Similarly, the number of members has been calculated for each party in different years.
Similarly, AIADMK has been mentioned as having 1.1 crore members based on the news published in ‘The Hindu‘ in 2018. Did no one join or leave the AIADMK party post that? After 2018, there have been various confusions and conflicts in the AIADMK and many key officials have left the party. This would have surely affected the number of members counts. This question on membership count applies to all the parties.
Who informs the number of members?
It is common for every political party to exaggerate that they have so many members to project themselves as the biggest party. Even today BJP is doing membership recruitment for their party through missed calls on cell phones. In this case, the question is how reliable is the number they say that there are so many crore members in BJP.
It is usual for political parties to tell their membership numbers themselves. Wikipedia has also published the ranking of parties based on such published news. First of all, it is important to understand that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source of information. The information in it can be easily edited.
Wikipedia ranks parties that have more than one lakh members. But DMK was not included in it. We searched for DMK membership count with the question ‘Does not a party ruling Tamil Nadu have even one lakh members?’
DMK has 2 crore members as per their official website. Like the membership count of other parties, the credibility of this is also questionable. However, Wikipedia does not mention this.
The media also publishes false information as a piece of news without any basic research. World Update, which was the first to post about it, has removed the tweet now. But has not posted any disclaimer or correction update. What is the reliability of research published on any forum? Which company published it? Media publishes news without considering any such basic questions. Politicians are also using it for their political gain.
This article is originally published in Tamil by Youturn.
