Sena vs Sena: Uddhav faction alleges ECI ‘biased’ towards Shinde group
The Hindu
The ECI on Tuesday finally accepted the ‘two swords and a shield’ symbol submitted by the Eknath Shinde faction.
With Andheri East by-poll turning to be a bitter flashpoint for the rival Sena factions, the Uddhav Thackeray-led led Sena group has now accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of showing an alleged ‘bias’ towards the ruling Sena faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in recent the allocation of party symbols and names.
In a four-page letter to the poll body from the Thackeray camp now known as the ‘Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)’, the latter has charged the ECI of ‘revealing’ its strategy to the Shinde camp (now called ‘Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena’) by uploading a copy of a confidential letter sent by the Uddhav camp containing the possible party name and symbol alternatives to be used in the upcoming Andheri East by-election even before Mr. Shinde’s group had submitted his own list.
In the letter, which ticks of the ECI on 12 points, the Thackeray faction has claimed that the ECI’s “intentionally uploading” of their confidential letter on the website helped the Shinde group to decode its strategy.
“Otherwise, how did the Shinde group give the same [party symbol and name] options as us? Further, to the surprise of the respondent [Thackeray faction], it was seen that the Hon’ble Commission thereafter deleted this letter from its website. Needless to say, no letter of the petitioner [Shinde group] stating his preference of symbols and names was ever uploaded on the [ECI] website,” said the letter, which was handed to the ECI by the Thackeray group’s lawyer.
Earlier this week on Monday, after hectic deliberation, the ECI had allotted the ‘flaming torch’ ( mashaal) symbol to the Thackeray faction while rejecting the Shinde group’s proposed symbols alternatives – of which two, the ‘trident’ and the ‘rising sun’ had been submitted by the Thackeray camp as well.
The ECI on Tuesday finally accepted the ‘two swords and a shield’ symbol submitted by the Eknath Shinde faction.
While the poll body had allotted new faction names for the rival camps, one of the proposed names - Shivsena (Balasaheb Thackeray), which had first been submitted by the Thackeray group, was later submitted by the Shinde camp as well.