Examine the test of majority used by the EC in deciding party splits. Is it adequate after the Tenth Schedule?

Para 15 of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 lets the Election Commission decide, after hearing rival sections, that one group — or none of them — is the recognised party, and makes that ruling binding [1]. The EC settles such splits through a "test of majority" now strained by the Tenth Schedule.

How the test operates

• Sadiq Ali v. ECI (1971) approved the EC's practice of weighing support in both the organisational wings and the legislature party.
• Where membership rolls and office-bearer lists are disputed or unverifiable, the EC falls back on affidavits of MPs and MLAs — as in the Congress dispute of 1996 [3] and the Shiv Sena dispute of 2022 [2].
• Pending final determination the EC freezes the reserved symbol and the party name; the AITC's "flowers and grass" was frozen on 17 September 2026 for the current byelections [5].

Why it has worked

• It is numerically verifiable, sparing the EC from judging ideological legitimacy.
• It keeps polls running, since symbols are reserved precisely so voters can identify a party on the ballot [1].

Inadequacy after the Tenth Schedule

• The Tenth Schedule disqualifies a legislator who voluntarily gives up party membership, shielding only a two-thirds merger [4]. Counting those very legislators to award the symbol rewards what the Schedule penalises.
• The test appears nowhere in Para 15's text [1]; being mere practice, it is unpredictable and appeal-prone.
• Legislative strength is easy to count, primary-membership support is not — a faction small in the party but large in the House can capture its identity.
• The "or none" middle path [1] is seldom used; freezes instead push parties into bypolls without settled identity [5].

The majority test suited an era before the anti-defection law and must now be realigned with it. Parliament should codify the test and its weights in the RP Act, 1951, while the EC adopts a published, time-bound schedule for Para 15 cases — the direction to fix a "reasonable timeline" points the same way [5]. This would strengthen both free elections under Article 324 and genuine inner-party democracy.