Election Commission accepted Sharad Pawar’s demands

Mumbai. The Election Commission said on Tuesday that it has accepted the request of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), in which it had requested to prominently display its election symbol ‘man blowing trumpet’ on the ballot units of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), but has rejected the demand to ban this election symbol. Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said that the NCP (SP) has told the election officials that its election symbol ‘man blowing trumpet’ was not prominently displayed on the ballot units of the EVM.

Kumar said, ‘We had asked them to clarify how they want to display their election symbol on the ballot unit. The NCP (SP) had given us three options regarding the election symbol and we accepted the first suggestion given by them. However, the Chief Election Commissioner clarified that the Commission does not want to make any change in the existing system of allocation of election symbols. He also rejected the request to remove the trumpet symbol from the list of election symbols.

Kumar said that the trumpet election symbol is different from the ‘man blowing a trumpet’. The Sharad Pawar-led party had argued that the trumpet election symbol is similar to the ‘man blowing a trumpet’, which caused confusion among voters during the Lok Sabha elections.

The NCP (SP) had said that the independent candidate who was allotted the trumpet election symbol in the Satara constituency had got more votes than the victory margin of BJP candidate Udayanraje Bhosale. Bhosale defeated NCP (SP) candidate Shashikant Shinde by 32,771 votes. Independent candidate Sanjay Gade, who contested on the trumpet symbol, got 37,062 votes.

When are the elections in Maharashtra?
Voting for all 288 assembly seats in Maharashtra will be held in one phase on November 20 and counting of votes will be done on November 23. Rajiv Kumar announced the schedule of Maharashtra Rajya Sabha assembly elections in a press conference here on Tuesday. He said that assembly elections will be held in one phase in Maharashtra.