Relevance: GS-2: Separation of powers between various organs, Dispute redressal mechanisms and institutions.

Key Phrases: Election Commission of India, Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, National or State party status, Party symbol, Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, Recognised Party.

Why in News?

• Recently, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena approached the Election Commission of India, requesting it to hear its side before deciding claims to the party’s bow-arrow symbol.

Election Symbol: Its Need, Issuing Authority etc.

• An electoral or election symbol is a standardised symbol allocated to a political party.
• They were introduced to facilitate voting by illiterate people, who can’t read the name of the party while casting their votes.
• In the 1960s, it was proposed that the regulation, reservation and allotment of electoral symbols should be done through a law of Parliament, i.e. Symbol Order.
• In a response to this proposal, the ECI stated that the recognition of political parties is supervised by the provisions of Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 and so will the allotment of symbols.
• The Election Commission registers political parties for the purpose of elections and grants them recognition as national or state parties on the basis of their poll performance. The other parties are simply declared as registered-unrecognised parties.
• The recognition determines their right to certain privileges like allocation of the party symbols, provision of time for political broadcasts on television and radio stations and access to electoral rolls.
• Every National party and every State party is allotted a symbol exclusively reserved for its use throughout the country and the states respectively.

Under what authority does the EC decide such disputes?

• The Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 empowers the EC to recognise political parties and allot symbols.
• Under Paragraph 15 of the Order, it can decide disputes among rival groups or sections of a recognised political party staking claim to its name and symbol.
• This applies to disputes in recognised National and State parties.
• For splits in registered but unrecognised parties, the EC usually advises the warring factions to resolve their differences internally or to approach the court.

The legal status of Paragraph 15:

• Under Paragraph 15, the EC is the only authority to decide issues on a dispute or a merger.
• The Supreme Court upheld its validity in Sadiq Ali and another vs. ECI in 1971.

Matters before the Symbols Order came into effect:

• Before 1968, the EC issued notifications and executive orders under the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.
• The most high-profile split of a party before 1968 was that of the Communist Party of India in 1964.
  • A breakaway group approached the EC in December 1964, urging it to recognize it as CPI(Marxist).
  • They provided a list of MPs and MLAs of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and West Bengal who supported them.
  • The ECI recognized the faction as CPI(M) after it found that the votes secured by the MPs and MLAs supporting the breakaway group added up to more than 4% in the 3 states.

What aspects does the ECI consider before recognising one group as the official party?

• The ECI primarily ascertains the support enjoyed by a claimant within a political party in its
  • Organisational wing and
  • Legislative wing.

How does the ECI establish a claim of majority in these wings?

• The Commission examines the party’s Constitution and its list of office-bearers submitted when the party was united.
• It identifies the apex Committee(s) in the Organization and finds out how many office-bearers, members or delegates support the rival claimants.
• For the Legislative wing, the party goes by the number of MPs and MLAs in the rival camps. It may consider affidavits filed by these members to ascertain where they stand.

Another way than the test of the majority:

• Whenever the EC could not test the strength of rival groups based on support within the party Organisation (because of disputes regarding the list of office-bearers), it fell back on testing the majority only among elected MPs and MLAs.

ECI ruling after a definite finding:

• The ECI may decide the dispute in favour of one faction by holding that it commands enough support in its Organisational and Legislative wings to be entitled to the name and symbol of the recognised party.
• It may permit the other group to register itself as a separate political party.

ECI may freeze the party’s symbol :

• Where the party is either vertically divided or it is not possible to say with certainty which group has a majority, the ECI may freeze the party’s symbol and allow the groups to register themselves with new names or add prefixes or suffixes to the party’s existing names.

If rival factions re-unite in the future:

• If reunited, the claimants may approach the ECI again and seek to be recognised as a unified party.
• The ECI is also empowered to recognise mergers of groups into one entity. It may restore the symbol and name of the original party.

What happens to the group that doesn’t get the parent party’s symbol?

• The ECI in 1997 did not recognise the new parties as either State or National Parties.
• It felt that merely having MPs and MLAs is not enough, as the elected representatives had fought and won polls on tickets of their parent (undivided) Parties.
• The ECI introduced a new rule under which the splinter group of the party — other than the group that got the party symbol — had to register itself as a separate party.
• It could lay claim to National or State party status only on the basis of its performance in the State or Central elections after registration.

Source: Indian Express, The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. Discuss the role of Election Commission of India in deciding issues like split in a party and dispute over party symbol . (250 words).