Kolkata: Calcutta High Court on Monday pulled up Election Commission for its “conduct” during the hearing of a dispute over an election symbol, suggesting a “connivance” between the poll body and Democratic Trinamool Congress, which was allotted the ‘envelope’ symbol that was previously with Indian Secular Front (ISF).
The EC counsel added that symbol allotment was the commission’s discretion and it had acted according to law by allotting ‘envelope’ to Democratic Trinamool and ‘almirah’ to ISF. Pursuant to the bench’s question whether the Commission could legally allot the symbol to Democratic Congress, EC counsel Jishnu Chowdhury submitted that ‘envelope’ was a ‘common symbol’ given to ISF, a registered but unrecognised political party, to fight just the assembly election and such an allocation did not create a right for ISF to seek the same symbol for the bypolls. He also submitted that a by-election was not a continuation of the assembly election, as argued by ISF.