The Madras High Court on Wednesday said the legality of one political party permitting candidates of another party to contest in its reserved symbol can be decided only after the completion of the ensuing Assembly election in the State and not before that. The court felt that it was too late in the day to take up the cases filed against such practices for final hearing when the ensuing election was hardly a fortnight away.
Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy directed the High Court Registry to club all cases that had been filed against such a practice followed by some political parties in the State and list them for hearing in the first week of June. The judges asked Election Commission of India (ECI) counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan to provide the numbers of all connected cases so that they could be heard together.
The judges also asked the counsel to ensure that the pleadings were complete before the cases could be taken up for hearing. During the course of hearing, Mr. Rajagopalan brought it to the notice of the court that, in terms of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order of 1968, the commission does not permit any recognised party to allow another recognised party to use the reserved symbols.
However, pointing out that the relevant guideline does not address the issue of a recognised political party entering into an agreement with an unrecognised political party and allow the members of the latter to contest in its reserved symbol, the judges said that the issue would require a detailed hearing after the ECI files its counter affidavits to the cases that had been filed against permitting such a practice.
