Symbol of trouble: Small parties are after AAP's broom to fight polls

The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) national ambition of ushering in a new electoral wave may hit a hurdle amid confusion, as smaller parties are after the AAP's election symbol.

Updated on: Jan 11, 2014, 23:24:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) national ambition of ushering in a new electoral wave may hit a hurdle amid confusion, as smaller parties are after the AAP's election symbol.

Unlike a national party, the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP does not have a right over its election symbol — broom — across India despite its recognition as a state party after forming the government in Delhi.

Even though the election symbol order says a state party should be given preference over unrecognised parties, the Election Commission (EC) has not yet issued any direction to chief electoral officers of states to reserve broom as an election symbol of the AAP.

With the Lok Sabha elections inching closer, chief electoral officers are getting requests from smaller parties to reserve the symbol for them.

The Unnati Party in Uttar Pradesh has moved high court, staking claim to the broom as it reportedly had contested the 2012 elections with this symbol. The Lucknow bench has issued a notice to the EC on the petition.

In Gujarat, another small party has asked the chief electoral officer to reserve broom as its symbol for the 2014 elections. It has also threatened to move court if it did not get its preferred symbol.

“It appears broom is the most-sought after election symbol among smaller political parties this season,” said a senior EC official, adding some other state election offices have received requests from parties to reserve torch, which resembles a broom, as their election symbol.

The AAP had estimated that it lost about eight assembly seats in Delhi because of the large number of votes cast in favour of candidates contesting with torch as their symbol.

EC officials admit there are also requests for symbols which appear similar to broom and can create confusion among voters.

The requests have started pouring in, with the EC recently allowing political parties to apply for their choice of free symbols. The symbol order allows parties to stake claim to a free symbol on first-come-first-serve basis.

A political party fighting polls with different election symbols in different states is not new in India. The Rashtriya Lok Dal has contested polls in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh with different election symbols. The Rashtriya Janata Dal has done the same in Bihar and Jharkhand.

But, not having a uniform symbol creates confusion in minds of voters, and poses problems to a party during campaigning and voting.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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