Shinde faction gets Shiv Sena name, symbol; Uddhav to move SC

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday assigned the party name “Shiv Sena” and the emblem “Bow and Arrow” to the faction led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, a huge loss for the Uddhav Thackery faction of Shiv Sena.

While the Shinde faction applauded the decision to acknowledge the Shiv Sena as the true Shiv Sena, the Uddhav Thackeray faction announced plans to petition the Supreme Court. The Uddhav Thackeray faction accused the Election Commission of haste and said the decision proves “it works as BJP agent”.

The Commission observed in its ruling that the current constitution of the Shiv Sena party is unconstitutional and has been “mutilated to undemocratically designate members from a coterie as office bearers without any election at all”. According to the report, such party structures do not inspire confidence.

The poll panel advised all political parties to reflect democratic ethos and principles of inner party democracy by regularly disclosing aspects of their inner party functioning on their respective websites, such as organisational details, election dates, a copy of the Constitution, and a list of office bearers.

“The constitution of political parties ought to provide for free, fair and transparent elections to the posts of office bearers and a further free and fair procedure for the resolution of internal disputes. These procedures ought to be difficult to amend and should be amendable only after ensuring larger support of the organisational members for the same,” the ECI said.

Last month, both the Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and former CM Uddhav Thackeray-led factions of the Shiv Sena submitted their written statements in support of their claims over the party name and symbol to the Election Commission.

The ECI had frozen the bow and arrow symbol of the Shiv Sena and had allotted the ‘Two Swords and Shield symbol’ to the Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena and the ‘flaming torch’ (mashaal) election symbol was allotted to the Uddhav Thackeray faction for the bypoll in Andheri East assembly constituency in November last year.

The poll panel designated the Uddhav faction as Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) prior to the Andheri East bypoll, and the Shinde faction as Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena. The name was to prevail till the final decision in the matter.