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Polity & Governance
Mahesh

24/10/23 07:48 AM IST

How are symbols allotted to political parties in India?

In News
  • The Supreme Court  refused to entertain a petition filed by the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) party in Telangana, challenging the allotment of election symbols to two other parties.
Symbols allotment
  • The Election Commission of India (ECI) is responsible for the allotment of symbols
  • . This is done under The Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, which is meant “to provide for specification, reservation, choice and allotment of symbols at elections in Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies, for the recognition of political parties…”
  • Symbols can be either reserved, meaning they are exclusive to a recognised political party (having garnered a minimum amount of votes or seats at the national or state level elections), or ‘free’.
  • 'Unrecognised registered parties’ candidates, for instance, can choose from free, non-exclusive symbols.
  • These parties are newly registered or have not secured enough percentage of votes in the Assembly or General elections to fulfil the prescribed criteria to become a state party.
  • After being selected by parties, in subsequent elections, these symbols are declared free again for others to choose.
  • Recognised national and state parties get exclusive symbols.
  • For example, when it came to selecting an election symbol for the 1993 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav picked the symbol of a bicycle from the given options, believing it would represent the farmers, the poor, labourers, and the middle class.
How Symbols enter the EC's lists?
  • Records with the ECI show that the commission had symbols sketched by the late MS Sethi, who retired from the ECI in September 1992.
  • He was the last draughtsman (someone tasked with sketching and drawing tasks) employed by the nodal body to sketch symbols.
  •  A team of ECI officials would sit together and think of daily objects that the common man could identify with.
  • Many established symbols of political parties — bicycle, elephants, brooms — were born of these sessions, ECI records reveal.”
  • Some not-so-familiar objects too were suggested by this group — a pair of glasses, a nail cutter and even a neck-tie, which was popularly worn by the English-speaking crowd post-Independence.
Source- Indian Express

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