Discuss the legal basis and precedents of the Election Commission's power to adjudicate disputes over a political party's name and symbol. Critically examine recent instances of its exercise.

A party's name and symbol are its electoral identity, yet they are governed not by a statute but by a subordinate instrument. The ECI's September 2026 freeze of the All India Trinamool Congress's name and symbol [4] has revived doubts about how this quasi-judicial power is structured and exercised.

Legal basis

• Rooted in Article 324 (superintendence of elections) read with the Representation of the People Act, 1951, under which the ECI issued the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 [1].
• Para 15 lets the Commission decide, after hearing rival sections each claiming to be a recognised party, that one group — or neither — is that party; the decision binds all groups [1].
• The "test of majority" (support in the legislative plus organisational wings) is judicially evolved in Sadiq Ali v. ECI (1972), not written into Para 15 [1]. Orders remain open to judicial review.

Precedents

• The 1969 Congress split first made the provision prominent; Para 15 was again invoked in Dispute Case No. 1 of 1996 concerning the INC [2].
• Shiv Sena, Dispute Case No. 1 of 2022: the final order of 17 February 2023 recognised the Shinde faction as the party and allotted it the reserved symbol [3].
• AITC, 2026: an interim order barred both the Banerjee and Roy groups from the party name and twin-flower symbol before the Nandigram and Rejinagar bypolls [4].

Critical assessment

• Merits: the ECI cannot refuse a rival claim; freezing rather than allotting avoids prejudging; it is faster than litigation and the remedy is interim.
• Limitations: Para 15 prescribes no deadline and no evidence standard [1], so delay itself disadvantages the incumbent; counting legislators can reward the very defection the Tenth Schedule penalises; self-certified membership rolls make the organisational limb unverifiable, a gap the 2013 Standing Committee report on electoral reforms left untouched [5].

The power is lawful; its open-ended discretion is the weakness. Writing the test, timeline and evidentiary standard into the RP Act, 1951 — as that Committee urged for allied ECI powers [5] — and mandating verifiable intra-party elections would ensure the Commission is seen to be, and not merely is, impartial.