The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Sharad Pawar faction to contest Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assembly polls under the ‘trumpet’ party symbol and the name ‘Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar’.
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A Bench headed by Justice Surya Kant further asked the Election Commission not to allot the ‘trumpet’ symbol to any other party or independent candidate.
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The court permitted the breakaway Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar to continue using the clock symbol, which was the original party symbol of the undivided NCP, for the present.
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Ajit gets original symbol
The Ajit Pawar group has been directed to issue a public notice in the newspapers in English, Marathi, Hindi editions declaring that the issue regarding allocation of the ‘clock’ symbol was sub judice in the Supreme Court, and his group was allowed to use the symbol “subject to the final outcome of the proceedings” in court.
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The court said the declaration of the group led by Ajit Pawar, who is the nephew of the elder Pawar, should be incorporated in every template, advertisement, audio or video clip.
The Bench passed the order on a plea by the Sharad Pawar group seeking to restrain the Ajit Pawar faction from using the ‘clock’ symbol for the polls, as allotted by the Election Commission, on the grounds that it was disrupting the level playing field.
It asked the Ajit Pawar camp to file its response within four weeks on the Sharad Pawar group’s plea against the February 6 order of the Election Commission recognising the former as the real Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
On February 19, the top court had directed that the Election Commission’s order allotting ‘Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar’ as the party name for the Sharad Pawar faction would continue till further orders.