By S A Ishaqui
Hyderabad, March 5 :A division bench comprising Justice B Prakash Rao and Justice G BhavaniPrasad of the AP High Court, on Thursday, issued notice to the Election Commission of India, directing it to file its reply before March 16 on apetition filed by Praja Rajyam Party.
Mr Allu Arvind, general secretary of the party, filed the plea challenging the order of the EC rejecting the plea of the party for a common free symbol.
Dealing with the petition the bench enquired with the counsel for the ECabout the procedure the agency would generally follow while allotting symbols to various registered, recognised and unrecognised parties.
Mr Vedula Venkat Ramana , counsel for the PRP , found fault with the decision of the EC . He said the EC 's objective of conducting free and fairpoll was at variance with certain rules of the symbol order envisaged by the Commission.
He said that the symbol allotment order is making a distinction between recognised and unrecognised parties though the EC Act makes no such distinction.He submitted that on one hand, these rules make it mandatory for any new political party to have a fixed percentage of votes polled in its favour and ,ironically, the same rules prevent the new party from getting its votes registered under a common symbol on the other.
Mr Ramana, contended that there was no prohibition on allotment of a common free symbol to a registered political party. He alleged that the authorities are quoting the symbol order and depriving the new parties from having a common free symbol."It defeats the very purpose of free and fair conduct of polls. Those rules which run counter to the objectives of EC Act should be set aside," he urged
Mr D Prakash Reddy, counsel for the EC told the court that before allotting a common free symbol to a registered party the EC has to look into several aspects and urged the court that he will discus the modalities and rules in his counter affidavit.
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