Humayun Kabir at the party office in Rejinagar on Saturday
Siddique has written to EC seeking restoration of the ‘envelope’ symbol and said he would approach the Calcutta High Court. Asked about the decision to allot the ‘table’ and ‘almirah’ symbols to AJUP and ISF, respectively, a senior EC official said unrecognised parties were allotted symbols from the list of free symbols. The change comes amid a wider reshuffle of symbols by EC ahead of the Rejinagar and Nandigram bypolls. The ‘envelope’ symbol, used by Nawsad Siddique’s Indian Secular Front (ISF) in previous elections, has also been allotted to Ritabrata Banerjee’s Democratic Trinamool Congress. ISF has instead been assigned the ‘almirah’ symbol.
These may or may not be the symbols allotted to them previously,” the official said. “Election symbols are reserved for recognised political parties. The ‘whistle’ symbol is permanently reserved for TVK after EC recognised it as a state political party in Tamil Nadu. For bypolls, it is the commission’s prerogative to freshly allot symbols to unrecognised political parties from the list of free symbols.