Kolkata: Calcutta High Court on Thursday pulled up Election Commission for allotting ‘envelope’ symbol — used by Indian Secular Front in the 2026 assembly election — to Democratic Trinamool Congress for the Oct 6 bypoll, and berated the commission for “creating trouble” and forcing parties to start legal proceedings thereby “burdening” the court.
We fought the 2026 assembly election using ‘envelope’ and we are also contesting the bypolls,” ISF’s counsel and senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya told the judge. ISF was given ‘envelope’ twice, the last being the 2026 assembly election.
“Authorities should act impartially and fairly,” Justice Krishna Rao told the poll panel and questioned why it had to choose ‘envelope’ from among 183 symbols to give to another party. “Is this the way it works?” he asked. Justice Rao said, “If you (EC) find that just four months back the symbol was used by one political party, for the by-election why did you choose that particular symbol?
The angry judge asked why EC was getting into disputes and ruffling parties to create legal proceedings. “Our voters will be confused. EC’s counsel argued that ISF is a registered unrecognised party and such parties do not have reserved symbols. ISF countered that the by-election was a continuation of the assembly election. You could have kept it reserved like the others. Why did you not keep it reserved?”