Ec Asks Parties To Sort Out Symbol Dispute

Four political parties have been literally faced with an elephantine problem.. The problem is that all four of them have elephant as their party symbol. The four parties are: the Asom Gana Parishad, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Sikkim Gana Parishad and the Pattali Makkal Katchi of Tamil Nadu.

All four are registered with the Election Commission, but now the BSP wants that the elephant symbol is granted exclusively to it. At this weeks hearing on the BSPs claim to being a national party, chief election commissioner M S Gill advised all the four parties to sit and resolve the issue among themselves. Accordingly, a meeting is scheduled for August 9 at the Assam Bhavan, where representatives of the four parties will put their heads together and try to resolve the problem.

Fortunately for them, neither of the four parties is a factor in states where others dominate. For example, the AGP has no base in states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh where the BSP is an important factor.