The Election Commission of India (EC) ON 17th February allotted the name ‘Shiv Sena’ and the party’s bow and arrow symbol to the Eknath Shinde faction in effect recognising it as the original party.
Test of majority
- The ECI came to rely on the “test of majority” to determine that the Shinde faction gets to use the party’s name and symbol of “Bow and Arrow”, as reserved under the Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968.
- The EC said that it had based its decision on a “test on majority” as the group of MLAs supporting the Eknath Shinde group had got nearly 76% of the votes polled for the 55 winning Shiv Sena candidates in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly Elections, while the Uddhav Thackeray faction got only 23.5% of votes.
Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968
- 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.
- 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.
Three criteria-Sadiq Ali case
- In a dispute that arose between two factions of the Congress in what became known as the Sadiq Ali case, the EC had in 1971 relied on the test of majority to decide which side got to retain the name and symbol. The other two criteria considered were test of party constitution and test of aims and objects, but it was the test of majority that won out in the end. The Supreme Court, too, upheld this approach.
- The EC’s decision to find the Indira Gandhi-backed faction the real Congress was then upheld by the Supreme Court in 1972.
Lack of internal democracies
- In the Shiv Sena order, the EC underlined the lack of internal democracies in political parties and said this was a cause of many of the disputes landing at its door.
- The EC said the requirement under the RP Act that political parties have a written constitution and submit an undertaking that the constitution is democratic is meant to promote internal democracy.
- The importance of a democratic organisational structure is only felt when there is a dispute.
