NCP(SP) Urges ECI to Freeze Poll Symbols Similar to Their Own

 Mumbai: Claiming that the confusion among voters about the symbols caused damage to the party in the recently held Lok Sabha polls, the NCP (SP) has urged the Election Commission to remove or exclude symbols similar to ‘Trumpet (Tutari),’ which it finds similar to its official ‘man playing turha’ symbol.

In its plea to the ECI, the NCP (SP) requested the poll agency to immediately withdraw or exclude the ‘Turha/Trumpet/Tutari’ symbol from the list of free symbols for the upcoming Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra, due in October this year. It claimed that such phonetically similar symbols misled voters and disadvantaged the party in the recently held Lok Sabha elections.

After the split in the party in July last year, the ECI had allotted the ‘man playing turha’ symbol from its list of free symbols to the NCP (SP). The party contested 10 Lok Sabha seats as part of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi coalition in the state and won eight of them.

However, the NCP (SP) feels that the party would have fared much better despite its impressive performance in the Lok Sabha polls. Citing data from nine Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra, the NCP (SP) emphasised that the confusion about symbols damaged its poll prospects and ‘deceptive’ symbols led to relatively unknown candidates gaining a significant number of votes.

Referring to the Satara Lok Sabha constituency result, the party claimed that the symbol misperception led to the defeat of its candidate. In Satara, the Independent nominee Sanjay Gade contested on the Trumpet symbol and garnered 37,062 votes, as NCP (SP) candidate Shashikant Shinde lost by a narrow margin of 32,771 votes. Shinde bagged 5,38,363 votes against the winning candidate Udayanraje Bhosale of BJP who secured 5,71,134 votes.

In Dindori constituency, independent candidate Babu Bhagare, contesting under the tutari symbol, secured as many as 1,03,632 votes. However, it did not affect the victory of Bhaskar Bhagare of the NCP (SP), who won by the margin of over 1.13 lakh votes.

State president of NCP Jayant Patil had also recently raised a concern saying that due to confusion in symbols, Shashikant Shinde was defeated from Satara.