The Election Commission of India has frozen the Trinamool Congress’s name and its “Flowers & Grass” symbol. In an interim order, it barred both rival factions from using them in the upcoming West Bengal Assembly bypolls.
The decision leaves Mamata Banerjee without the party’s best-known electoral identity weeks before voters go to the polls.
The symbol of West Bengal assembly elections is likely to carry more weight than expected, as the party has to contend with history.
The party’s decades-old brand equity will clash with the need to change its poll symbol and candidates at the polling booth now have to adopt a new symbol within a week.
Nandigram, a key constituency for Banerjee who needs to win it badly. Her party will have to educate voters about the new symbol, ensuring that it does not dilute the TMC brand.
There is a partial cushion. The rebels cannot claim the original identity as the Election Commission of India (ECI) has created parity between the two factions.
The ECI said the deal was meant to maintain the rights of the two groups while keeping them in an equal position until a final decision is reached.
Opposition parties were quick to react. The Indian National Congress accused the ECI of “firing a bullet at the heart of Indian democracy’’, and listed what it considered vote theft, government theft and now party theft.
A wider argument about the neutrality of the ECI, especially if the verdict on the final Paragraph 15 favours the rebels.
Three factors determine the damage this episode does. First, the speed with which voters in Nandigram and Rejinagar cotton on to the new symbols.
Second, whether the Commission expedites the Paragraph 15 hearing on the bypolls.
And third, whether the rebel faction demonstrates organisational and legislative heft, since past splits have been resolved more by these factors than by symbols.
For the moment, the freeze turns a party feud into a referendum on the ability of Banerjee’s charisma to overcome the absence of the symbol it has deployed with such success.
