Discuss the constitutional and statutory basis of the Election Commission's power to adjudicate disputes over party symbols and names. Illustrate with recent examples.

The Constitution nowhere mentions political parties or their symbols, yet the Election Commission of India (ECI) routinely decides which faction of a split party is the "real" party. This adjudicatory power rests on Article 324 read with a delegated instrument, the Symbols Order, 1968 — a combination now being tested in the live Trinamool Congress (TMC) dispute.

Constitutional basis

• Article 324(1) vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the ECI — a plenary, reservoir power that operates wherever enacted law is silent [1].
• Since symbols are the voter's primary means of identifying a party, regulating rival claims is treated as incidental to the "conduct of elections".
• In Kanhiyalal Omar v. R.K. Trivedi (1985), the Supreme Court upheld the Symbols Order as a valid exercise of Article 324 powers, not an excessive delegation [2].

Statutory / quasi-judicial basis

• Parties are registered under Section 29A, Representation of the People Act, 1951; recognition and symbol reservation follow the Symbols Order [3].
• Paragraph 15 empowers the ECI to decide claims by rival sections of a recognised party, and makes its decision binding on all factions [3].
• Sadiq Ali v. ECI (1971) approved the "test of majority" — support in both the organisational and legislature wings — as the governing standard [4].
• The ECI may freeze the symbol as an interim measure; its order remains open to judicial review under writ jurisdiction [2].

Recent illustrations

• Shiv Sena (2022–23): the symbol was frozen, interim names allotted, and the Shinde faction finally recognised — a ruling challenged before the Supreme Court [5]; the NCP split followed a similar course.
• TMC (2026): the ECI heard the Mamata Banerjee and Ritabrata Banerjee camps on 12 September 2026 over the joda ghash phool symbol, ahead of the Nandigram and Rejinagar bypolls [6].

Thus the ECI acts as a constitutionally empowered electoral arbiter, not a judge of internal party morality. Strengthening intra-party democracy — verified membership registers and audited internal elections, as successive reform reports urge — would reduce reliance on numerical majority tests and secure both voter clarity and party legitimacy.