Chandigarh: Smaller parties should be made to ally with national level parties ahead of polls as their growth was "affecting" good governance at the Centre, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) T R Krishnamurthy said in Chandigarh today (Sep 8, 2004).

"When candidates get elected from smaller parties at the time of Government formation these parties dictate terms in extending support," he said during a lecture on 'Problems and Prospects of Electoral Reforms'.

Stating that the issues of national governance were different from that of the States, Krishnamurthy said, "Regional parties must align with the national parties for contesting elections as the growth of such parties is affecting quality of governance at the national level."

With several political parties with "limited interests" being formed at the regional level, there should be some kind of regulation in regard to these parties, he said.

Krishnamurthy said as many as 600 political parties were registered with the Election Commission out of which only six were national parties.

He stressed on the need to change the existing political system and sought cooperation from political parties, State Governments and people for having a long-term system with good governance.

"We should have a system where we could elect fixed number of candidates from a party," the CEC said.

He said the EC had recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations in its efforts to globalise and assist other countries in the spread of democracy.