Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Oct 10: Uddhav Thackeray, a former chief minister of Maharashtra, has petitioned the Delhi High Court for a stay of the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) order to freeze the use of the name ‘Shiv Sena’ and the bow-and-arrow symbol.
Thackeray’s alternative petition is to provide his candidates the symbol of their choosing for the next by-elections rather than limiting them to the three options provided by the ECI.
Both the Uddhav Thackrey and Eknath Shinde factions have staked a claim to the party name and symbol, but the election board issued a temporary order on October 8 prohibiting the use of either name or symbol until it determines which of the two competing factions is authorised to do so.
The prohibition will be in effect for the State’s next byelections. Anup Chandra Pandey and Rajiv Kumar, the chief election commissioner, approved the decision.
The judgement stipulated that both factions might select names of their choice in the interim, including ones that were connected to their parent party, Shivsena.
“Both the groups shall also be allotted such different symbols as they may choose from the list of free symbols notified by the Election Commission for the purposes of the current bye-elections,” it further said.
The decision about which camp the Thackeray camp or the Shinde camp is the real Shiv Sena was made in response to a petition from the Shinde group.
This came about after Uddhav Thackeray’s cabinet was overthrown as a result of the Shinde and the majority of Shiv Sena MLAs withdrawing their support for him.
