E-Paper
ECI provisionally authorised NCP (SP) to accept voluntary contributions
The move will allow the Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar or NCP (SP) to issue certificates to donors for income tax exemptions
Months before the Maharashtra assembly elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has provisionally authorised the Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar or NCP (SP) to accept voluntary contributions from the public as it has registered it under the Representation of the People Act on an interim basis. The move will allow the NCP (SP) to issue certificates to donors for income tax exemptions. The NCP (SP) is now required to submit a contribution report to the ECI of all donations greater than ₹20,000.
“After having considered your letters dated 27.03.2024 and 04.04.2024, the ECI hereby authorizes, on an interim basis, ‘Nationalist Congress Party- Sharadchandra Pawar’ to ‘accept any amount of contribution voluntarily offered to it by any person or company other than a Government company’,” ECI wrote to NCP (SP) on Monday.
It added the authorsiation for the assembly elections would remain applicable until the final disposal of Sharad Pawar’s plea in the Supreme Court against the ECI’s order granting the NCP name and symbol (clock) to his nephew, Ajit Pawar. The party split after Ajit Pawar tied up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last year.
The authorisation was granted after an eight-member NCP (SP) working president Supriya Sule-led delegation met the chief election commissioner and other ECI officials in New Delhi on Monday.
Sule said they could not earlier receive cheques. “We were not getting tax benefits for contributions like other political parties. We want to fight this [assembly] election transparently, using only white money. I am grateful to the ECI for granting us a letter allowing us to raise money legally and transparently,” Sule said.
An ECI official said NCP (SP) was a recognised but unregistered party. Registration is not mandatory for a political party. But it is mandatory to avail tax benefits on funds raised, the official said.
NCP (SP), which won eight of the 11 seats it contested in this summer’s national polls, could not give certificates to its donors for tax exemptions due to the lack of registration/authorisation from the ECI.
Similar poll symbols
NCP (SP) also raised issues related to its poll symbol, a man blowing a trumpet, during the Monday meeting with the ECI. It asked the ECI to remove the turhi, tutari, and trumpet from the list of available symbols as they are “deceptively similar” to NCP (SP)’s symbol.
In a letter dated June 15 to the ECI, the party said the allocation of similar symbols resulted in “a loss of votes to the party”. It added an independent candidate with a tutari as a symbol “capitalized” on the “established brand” of NCP (SP) and “managed to secure a substantial number of votes that rightfully should have accrued” to the NCP (SP). NCP (SP)’s advocate Pranjal Agarwal wrote that this “unfair advantage” had “undermined the democratic process”.
The party raised the issue before the elections as well. But the ECI in April said that the two symbols were distinct enough not to cause confusion among voters.
In June, NCP (SP) claimed that in nine of the eleven seats it contested, it lost 410,385 votes to the trumpet symbol used by proxy candidates, who at times had names similar to the NCP (SP) candidates. In the case of the Satara Lok Sabha constituency, the party “strongly alleged” that its candidate, Shashikant Shinde, lost because a “proxy independent candidate”, Gade Sanjay, was allotted the trumpet symbol. The winning BJP candidate, Udayanraje Bhonsle got 571,134 votes, 32,771 more than Shinde, “which is less than the votes lost to the proxy independent candidate”, who got 37,062 votes.
“In a democracy, there must be transparency. There should not be injustice done to any candidate. But injustice has taken place in Satara. Our symbol, the man blowing a trumpet, was placed next to a lookalike symbol of just a trumpet. … We have requested the Election Commission that when there is a symbol of a man blowing a trumpet, they must not allocate any lookalike symbol to any other party or candidate. … They [EC] have said that they will study the matter and get back to us,” Sule said after meeting ECI officials.
The party said that both the visual similarity between the party symbols and the translations confused the electorate. NCP (SP)’s party symbol is named “tutari phuknewala manus” while Maharashtra’s state election commission translated “trumpet” as “tutari”.
The ECI official cited above said the poll body asked the party to specify whether they have a problem with the translation of the description or with the symbol.
The NCP (SP) told the ECI its symbol was smaller than other symbols on the EVM. It added the symbol also has significant blank space around it. The party called it “gravely prejudicial” in a letter to the ECI dated June 24. It added the “discrepancy could potentially confuse and mislead voters, especially those with weaker vision, ultimately undermining their ability to make a fully informed choice”.
The official cited above said the ECI has asked the party to suggest a way the aspect ratio of the symbol is fixed to occupy the negative space better without distorting the symbol. The poll body’s EVM section will examine it once the party gives its submission, the official said.
