Election Commission Freezes TMC Symbol Amid Rival Faction Claims

The Election Commission's power to decide who owns a party's name and symbol during a split flows from the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, issued under the Commission's Article 324 authority. Before this Order came into force, the Commission relied only on executive notifications under the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, which is how it handled the 1964 split in the Communist Party of India that produced the CPI(M). Once a rival group claims to be the real party, Para 15 of the 1968 Order gives the Commission a distinct adjudicatory role: to decide which faction, if any, is the recognised party, with its decision binding all rival groups. This is separate from the judicial function of resolving disputed elections. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, challenges to the validity of a candidate's election are decided by High Courts through election petitions, not by the Chief Election Commissioner. The Commission's Para 15 power over party identity is an administrative-cum-quasi-judicial function of a different kind altogether.

The first major test of this framework came with the 1969 split in the Indian National Congress, when the party's old guard, called the Syndicate, expelled Indira Gandhi. The Commission allotted the original symbol, a pair of bullocks with a yoke, to the old Congress faction and gave a cow-and-calf symbol to the breakaway group. This case established that the Commission could examine internal party records to settle such disputes, and it also affirmed that a faction denied the parent symbol could still gain recognition in its own right if it separately met the criteria for recognition of political parties.