Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray faction has accused the Election Commission of bias. Eminent lawyer Kapil Sibal, appearing in the court for Shiv Sena, also raised the question that Shiv Sena name and bow arrow election symbol is with the Thackeray family-led party for decades and the faction of Eknath Shinde has left the party. Then how the commission can confiscate that name and election symbol. But the commission has this easy route and it is done almost every time to strike a balance. Whenever the parties break up, the symbol is forfeited.
The partisanship of the Election Commission has not ended so much that it confiscated the name and symbol of Shiv Sena. Later, when both the groups applied for name and symbol, there was a bias in that too. The Uddhav Thackeray faction had preferred the name ‘Shiv Sena Balasaheb Thackeray’. His second choice was ‘Shiv Sena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray’. The Election Commission did not give the Thackeray faction its preferred name, but a second-choice name. Recently, when there was a split in the Lok Janshakti Party in Bihar, the Election Commission had given Chirag Paswan the first name of his choice ‘Lok Janshakti Party Ramvilas’. On this basis the Thackeray faction should have been given the name of Balasaheb Thackeray.
But the Election Commission did not give that name to Uddhav Thackeray. He was given the name of his name i.e. Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray, while the name of his father i.e. Balasaheb Thackeray was given to Eknath Shinde. Shinde had asked for the name ‘Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena’ i.e. Balasaheb’s Shiv Sena and the Election Commission gave that name. Despite this, the Uddhav Thackeray faction is satisfied because the name of Balasaheb Thackeray is also in the name of his party and the symbol of ‘torch’ has also been found.
Keep in mind that Shiv Sena had won the first seat of the assembly with the ‘Mashal’ imprint. This is from 1985, when Shiv Sena did not get the status of a state level party. Then each of its candidates used to fight with a different symbol. In that election Chhagan Bhujbal, Shiv Sena’s candidate from Mazagon seat, contested on a torch print and he won. He was the only MLA of Shiv Sena in that assembly. Then Manohar Joshi also contested but lost. Later he became the first Chief Minister of Shiv Sena in the state. At that time the party used to fight on the election symbol of the train engine to the ball and the bat. Now the party is considering it a coincidence that it has got the symbol from which its account was opened.
