The party's structural rules.
Ten binding principles that govern how the party operates — distinct from how the government runs. The Constitution governs; the party persuades. These are the procedural floors that keep persuasion honest.
Power vs Responsibility.
The day a representative starts treating the role as power, the recall mechanism exists to take it back. The five non-negotiable commitments are responsibilities, not slogans. The Service Charter is a written promise — a responsibility owed. The Open Ledger makes that responsibility verifiable. The Standard Escalation Ladder makes default unacceptable. The 30-month recall window makes default reversible by citizens.
Every other principle in this addendum is downstream of this one. If a member or candidate treats office as power, no procedural rule will hold them. If they treat it as responsibility, every procedural rule becomes a tool they themselves want to honour.
On caste and community.
Caste-blind by binding rule
No caste, sub-caste, jati, or community field on membership applications. No caste-coded ticket distribution. No caste consideration in office-bearing selection. No caste-targeted campaign material. No caste-based caucuses inside the party. Volunteer Code of Conduct makes infractions enforceable up to expulsion.
Constitutional reservations fully respected
Reservations for SC, ST, OBC, EWS and others — substantively purposeful, real, and not disrupted by this manifesto. The State Equity Commission audits whether reservation outcomes actually materialise in admissions, hiring, and contract awards; triggers gap-closing programmes where they do not.
P.1.3 On future policy changes — by public deliberation. Any future change to reservation policy is decided through structured public deliberation. The party may have a position; the party does not have the right to impose one. Question framing, evidence base, deliberation method, and conclusion — all published. Manifesto change requires either Supreme Court judgement, Constitutional amendment, or a binding statewide public-deliberation outcome.
On religion.
No religious test
Membership, leadership, and candidacy are decided against the leadership rubric (P.4). No religious affiliation is recorded or considered. No religious-identity-coded outreach. No religious caucuses inside the party. Members across faiths participate equally — and members of no faith equally.
Constitutional secularism
The state under this manifesto is neutral toward all religions and partial to none. Public services are delivered without religious test, religious preference, or religious exclusion. State expenditure on religion-specific programmes follows strict constitutional principles; the Open Ledger publishes every such transaction.
No imports. No parachutes.
Who can join, and how. Citizens who have never held elected office can join immediately under the standard membership process. Former elected officials from other parties — after a published cooling-off period and a P.4 leadership-rubric evaluation that scores their actual record against the nine axes, not against their party brand. The rubric is the gate; the brand is irrelevant.
Why this rule exists. The party is built from booth volunteers up — not by parachute from another organisation's failure. Voters who chose this party deserve to know that the person on the ticket developed inside this party's principles, against this party's rubric, with this party's Code of Conduct. The shortcut of importing a popular face from another party is precisely the shortcut that produces the politics this party exists to replace.
Leadership Selection Rubric.
How the rubric becomes a decision. Every candidate scored independently by a panel under sealed-ballot procedure. Scores publish (with personally identifying details redacted where required by law); selection rationale publishes. Vacancy declared if no candidate meets the threshold — the seat goes unfilled rather than filled by capture. Anti-capture safeguards on the panel itself: random rotation, civil-society observers, KSSL-anchored panel meetings.
Volunteer Code of Conduct.
Enforceable categories: caste-coded or religion-coded action; harassment or threatening behaviour; financial impropriety; misuse of party platforms; breach of P.6 Oath Boundary; private campaign coordination with another party; anti-Constitutional speech or action. Process: complaint filed → preliminary inquiry → adjudication panel → published decision → appeal to a separate appeals body. Severity scaled to the breach; expulsion reserved for the most serious + repeated patterns.
The Code of Conduct sits separately as an enforceable document, distinct from this manifesto. It binds every member from booth volunteer to elected representative — equally. No carve-outs for sitting MLAs, MLCs, or office-bearers.
The Oath Boundary.
Operational rules. Once sworn in, an elected representative reports to citizens through the Constitution + the Service Charter — not through a party whip outside the Cabinet decision. Party meetings on government policy continue, but the elected member's primary accountability shifts to the constituency + the Cabinet's collective responsibility. Party office-bearers do not hold supervisory authority over elected members on government matters.
The Candidate Accountability Agreement is the binding document each candidate signs before nomination. It records the rubric score, the manifesto-commitment baseline, the recall criteria, and the Oath Boundary commitments. It is published.
The six gates of recall. Recall is party-run for party-side breaches (Code of Conduct, P.4 rubric deception, P.6 boundary breach, financial impropriety, manifesto deviation per P.8, by-election cost rule per P.7) — leading to expulsion + un-ticketing. Government-side recall (citizens removing a sitting MLA) happens through formal by-election under existing constitutional procedure; the party does not hold a separate mechanism beyond cooperating with that process.
State-borne by default; party-borne only on court order.
The cost reimbursement is not automatic and not party-decided. It activates only on a court order under existing law. The party's commitment is to settle the cost within 90 days of the order; the source of funds is the General Election Fund (cf. P.9). The undertaking is public, lodged with the Election Commission at the time of nomination.
Manifesto Execution + Course-Correction Protocol.
The party's role. Before election: develop the manifesto with rigour. After election: protect the manifesto as the published contract; track delivery against the 18 Vol III App H programme sheets; publish quarterly progress against KPIs; flag drift.
The elected representative's role. Execute the manifesto within the constitutional bounds of Cabinet collective responsibility. Make course corrections on evidence and against published criteria. Sign a Candidate Accountability Agreement at nomination that binds the elected member to the manifesto.
Course-correction protocol. Major deviation → evidence base published → public deliberation (panchayat + ward + JANATA channels) → revised commitment published with the rationale and the evidence. Unilateral deviation triggers the P.6 recall consequence.
Non-negotiable, never available for course correction: the five non-negotiable commitments (Vol I Ch 1), the four binding tests (Vol I Ch 6), the operating-spine architecture (Vol I Ch 2), the Open Ledger, the recall mechanism, the Oath Boundary itself.
Party funding — ₹1,000 monthly cap, full transparency.
No corporate, no anonymous, no foreign
No corporate donations of any size or category. No anonymous donations of any size. No foreign donations under FCRA — Indian citizens and Indian permanent residents only. No cash donations above ₹2,000 (statutory floor). No in-kind donations from prohibited categories.
Merchandise + events at cost recovery
Party merchandise and event tickets are priced at cost-recovery levels. The party does not run profit-generating commercial activities. Donations and merchandise revenues are reconciled monthly on the published ledger.
Transparency cadence. Live per-transaction donation ledger. Quarterly published balance with reconciliation. Annual independent audit by a panel from outside the party. KSSL anchors every donation event. The cap on donations is structural: it makes the party irresistible to small donors and impossible to capture by large ones.
The principles are durable because they are circular.
Each principle reinforces the one beside it. Caste-blind operation makes the leadership rubric workable. The rubric makes the Oath Boundary credible. The Oath Boundary makes course-correction honest. And every loop circles back to P.0 — power versus responsibility.
Ask the manifesto anything about the Party Operating Principles.
The TPM bot answers from the manifesto + addendum directly — cited to the relevant principle and section. Works in Kannada and English.