Maharashtra Election: NCP (Sharad Pawar) has claimed that allotment of ‘Pipani’ election symbol to independents confused voters in the Lok Sabha elections and caused huge losses to the party in some constituencies.
After the Lok Sabha elections, now the bugle for Maharashtra assembly elections is about to be blown. All the political parties have started preparing for their strategic meetings. On the other hand, Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has written a letter to the Election Commission and asked for a quick decision on the allocation of election symbol. The party has demanded that Pipani, which is similar to the ‘Tutari’ election symbol allotted to it last year, be removed from the list of election symbols.
NCP (Sharad Pawar) has claimed that allotment of ‘Pipani’ election symbol to independents confused voters in the Lok Sabha elections and caused heavy losses in some constituencies. The party said that this is against the principle of creating a ‘level playing field’ for contesting elections.
The Election Commission had allotted the election symbol of ‘person playing a flute’ to Sharad Pawar’s party before the Lok Sabha elections after the party split. The party urged the commission to immediately withdraw the election symbol of ‘Pipani’ for the assembly elections to be held in Maharashtra in October this year. In the letter, NCP (Sharad Pawar) stressed the importance of maintaining the fairness and integrity of the electoral process to ensure free and fair elections.
Citing data from nine Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra, the party explained how confusing symbols have helped independent candidates get a good number of votes. In the recent parliamentary elections, NCP (Sharad Pawar) contested as a constituent of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra. The party contested ten seats, winning eight of them. Maharashtra has a total of 48 Lok Sabha seats.
NCP (Sharad Pawar) cited the example of independent candidate Sanjay Gande, who contested from Satara seat on the symbol of Tutari and got 37,062 votes, due to which NCP (Sharad Pawar) candidate Shashikant Shinde lost by a narrow margin of 32,771 votes. Shashikant Shinde got 5,38,363 votes. While BJP’s Udayraje Bhosale got 5,71,134 votes.