A day after the Election Commission of India (ECI) allotted the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) name and ‘wall clock’ symbol to the Ajit Pawar-led camp, the poll body allotted “Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar” as the party name for the Sharad Pawar-led faction.
In a massive setback for the Sharad Pawar-led faction, the ECI on Tuesday declared the Ajit Pawar faction as the real NCP.
The 140-page EC order on Tuesday said, “…this commission holds that the faction led by the petitioner, Sh Ajit Anantrao Pawar, is the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and is entitled to use its name and reserved symbol “clock” of the purposes of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968.”
The commission said there were serious inconsistencies in terms of timelines in the claim of the Sharad Pawar group on organisational majority, which resulted in unreliability of their claim.
In July last year, a majority of NCP MLAs, along with Ajit Pawar, had walked away to join the BJP-Shiv Sena government in the state.
Following the decision of the ECI, the Sharad Pawar faction called it the “murder of democracy”. NCP MP Supriya Sule said that the party will approach the Supreme Court against the ECI order.
The EC’s decision came days ahead of the retirement of election commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey. Since it is a quasi-judicial order, it has to be signed by all the three members of the ECI.
The EC had allowed the Sharad Pawar-led faction a “one-time option” to claim a name for its political outfit and to give three preferences by Wednesday afternoon in view of the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections in the state.
Accordingly, the Sharad Pawar group has suggested the names — Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar, Nationalist Congress Party — Sharadrao Pawar and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharad Pawar — to the Commission, and gave its preference of election symbol as “banyan tree”.
The Commission conveyed to Sharad Pawar that it has “acceded to your first preference, i.e. ‘Nationalist Congress Party — Sharadchandra Pawar’ as the name of your group/faction as a onetime option for the purposes of forthcoming election to 6 seats in the Rajya Sabha in Maharashtra…”