Alarming notes from 4 of 10 seats: Why NCP (SP) wants solo rights to trumpet

The Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), which won eight of the 10 Lok Sabha seats it contested in the recent elections, believes it could have performed better but for the fact that the “tutari” (trumpet) – similar to its poll symbol – is part of the Election Commission’s (EC) list of free symbols, to be allotted to Independents or unregistered political parties.

The NCP (SP) has now approached the EC to take the tutari off its list of free symbols, particularly ahead of the Assembly elections later this year.

The NCP (SP) was allotted the “tutari vajavnaara maanus (man blowing the trumpet)” symbol after the EC recognised the Ajit Pawar-led faction as the real NCP and assigned it both the party name and original symbol of a clock.

“The confusion among voters was evident from the number of votes that Independent candidates with the tutari symbol, similar to our symbol, got,” party general secretary Jaidev Gaikwad said. Pointing out that the NCP (SP) had told the EC before the polls too to not allot the tutari symbol to others, he added: “We lost one seat due to the confusion over the symbol but it had a ripple effect in other constituencies as well. Fortunately, our candidates got a huge number of votes and the final outcome was not affected.”

The party is also apprehensive that the symbol confusion – if it persists – will hurt its chances even more in the coming Assembly elections with the number of voters per constituency smaller. “If the EC does not yield to our demand, we will approach the Supreme Court,” Gaikwad said.

Satara: An Independent candidate allotted the “tutari” symbol, Sanjay Gade, a first-time candidate, bagged 37,062 votes in this constituency. The NCP (SP) candidate, Shashikant Shinde, ended up