Desperate situations push people to make desperate moves, even ridiculous ones at times. Here’s the case of Prajarajyam Party’s desperate move to get a common symbol that got the better of it.
As the story goes, actor-turned politician and PRP chief Chiranjeevi, submitted to the commission a proposal to get a common symbol allotted to it for the general election scheduled to be held in April.
According to the proposal, Chiranjeevi offered to deposit with the Election Commission an amount equal to 25 per cent of the security amount to be deposited by the candidates with the returning officers.
EC sources said the offer was made in the form of a written suggestion to relax the Symbols Order—1968, saying that the common symbol facility should be made available to all the registered-unrecognized parties intending to contest more than 50 per cent of the seats in the House. The proposal did not find favour with the commission.
“There are more than 250 registered-unrecognized parties as of today and in none of these cases, any common symbol has been allotted, although a few of them even won seats in assemblies, and polled a reasonably large number of votes in general elections,” the Commission wrote to Chiranjeevi, adding that its stand on the allotment of common symbol to the parties had been consistent over the years.
Commission secretary K C Wilfred conveyed the disapproval of the EC in a letter to the PRP president Chiranjeevi last month saying that this proposal virtually makes an election symbol a purchasable commodity. “Your proposal will result in unreasonable classification of unrecognized parties into two groups— one group having more funds to make deposits to the extent indicated by you and the other parties having no such funds and depending on the candidates themselves to make their own security deposit”, Wilfred wrote adding that EC does not indulge in taking security deposit from the parties.
Another PRP’s suggestion that the common symbol could be withdrawn if the party failed to contest the 50 per cent of the seats was dismissed as not practical.
“In multi-phased elections, it will not be possible to decide in the initial phases whether the parties will end up contesting prescribed percentage of seats in the House. Withdrawal of common symbol in later phases of election is not practical because as the allotment of symbol order would have already been passed by the time the filing of nomination for these phases begin,” the secretary said.
According to Wilfred, the EC had already done a favour by straight away registering the PRP. “Normally, the political party should contest a general election and poll at least one per cent of votes to be eligible for registration which is not the case with Prajarajyam which has been straight away registered,” the letter said.
Clarifying the case of TDP’s common symbol in the 1983 elections, the commission said the candidates of TDP got preference over the independent candidates in choosing a symbol from the list provided by the returning officers.
Chiranjeevi should now know that there are some scripts that can’t be changed, even if one is a megastar.
‘Mega ticket’ to film technician
Prajarajyam Party chief Chiranjeevi on Thursday announced the candidature of a film technician (electrician) Humayun from the newly-created Jubilee Hills assembly constituency in Hyderabad. The only other candidature announced by the PRP chief as yet is that of a tribal woman Munemma from Sri Potti Sriramulu Nellore district.
Playing messiah of the minorities, Chiranjeevi, while addressing a party meeting near Salar Jung Museum, painted the Congress, TDP and BJP with same communal brush and accused them of betraying minorities.
Strengthening his argument of social justice, the PRP chief announced that the party had decided to allot eight parliamentary and 35 assembly seats to Muslims in the elections.
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