'Really fed up': Calcutta HC pulls up ECI
What's the story
The Calcutta High Court on Thursday expressed its displeasure with the Election Commission of India (ECI) for allotting the "envelope" symbol to the Ritabrata Banerjee-led Democratic Trinamool Congress (DTC). The court was hearing a petition from the Indian Secular Front (ISF), which contested the 2026 assembly elections using the envelope symbol. The ISF, led by Nawsad Siddiqui, had won the Bhangar seat in those elections.
Legal proceedings
HC's scathing remarks on ECI
Justice Krishna Rao asked why the ECI chose the "envelope" symbol from 183 available symbols to give to another party.
"Really fed up with the authority....Once the elections start, you start creating trouble. Then parties come...putting burden on the court," the court told ECI's counsel.
He questioned if this was how the commission functioned and stressed the need for impartiality and fairness in their actions.
"The authority should act fairly," Justice Rao observed.
Symbol dispute
ISF sought to freeze 'envelope' symbol
The ISF had approached the court seeking to freeze the "envelope" symbol after it was allotted to the DTC for the upcoming bypolls on October 6.
The ECI then allotted ISF an "almirah" symbol for these bypolls.
Senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, representing ISF, had argued that this would confuse voters as they had used the "envelope" symbol in the assembly election.
Symbol reservation
ECI's response to the court's questions
The ECI's counsel defended the decision by saying that ISF, being a registered unrecognized party, does not have reserved symbols.
They argued that since the ISF is an unrecognized party, it cannot claim a reserved symbol.
The court questioned why the ECI didn't keep the "envelope" symbol reserved for future use, given its recent use by another party.
In fact, since 2021, the ISF had popularized the symbol to represent the party.
Court
'If you find that just four months back..'
"If you (EC) find that just four months back the symbol was used by one political party....why did you choose that particular symbol? You could have kept it reserved like the others," the court said.
"Our campaign materials for the Nandigram bypoll are ready. All campaign materials have the envelope symbol printed on them. In Bengal, the party had identified itself with the envelope symbol. Now, we have to start from scratch," an ISF leader earlier said.