The Election Commission has decided to allot the Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) ‘clock’ symbol to its Sharad Pawar faction. The EC today unanimously recognised the group led by Pawar as the ‘‘real’’ NCP, which can use the symbol as well as enjoy the status of being a national party. While the Pawar group has 10 MPs, 60 MLAs and 17 MLCs, the P.A. Sangma faction includes eight MLAs and two MPs, one each from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. The two factions had approached the EC on January 27, both laying a claim to the NCP symbol, name and flag. Sangma, the NCP general secretary, claimed that Pawar had been removed as president of the party at a January 24 convention and he had been voted in to replace him. However, according to the Pawar group, Sangma and five others had been expelled from the party that day. The EC order stated that it was satisfied beyond doubt that ‘‘the group led by Pawar has far superior numerical support in the organisational and legislature wings of the party, and we see no reason at all for any interim order allowing the matter to linger on’’. Sangma’s main contention was that the NCP under Pawar was diluting the basis of formation of the party—opposition to a person of foreign origin from occupying the office of Prime Minister—by allying with the Congress. Pawar claimed they still stood by that principle, but that the issue needed to be debated publicly, and ‘‘the party is not a single, static-agenda party’’. The EC dismissed Sangma’s argument. ‘‘.it is to be noted that the issue of people of foreign origin becoming the Prime Minister is not incorporated in the constitution of the party submitted to the Commission in connection with registration of the NCP under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, or in the copies submitted subsequently,’’ its order said. The mood in the Pawar group headquarters in Delhi was celebratory. ‘‘My ideology is of the Gandhi-Nehru family and we are taking it forward,’’ Pawar said from Mumbai. But the general secretary of the Pawar group, Pitamabar Master, did not try to hide the bitterness caused by the split. ‘‘It is a victory that did not surprise us. Sangma has been isolated by the party’s rank and file as he tried to stab the NCP in the back at the bidding of his friends in the BJP.’’
