Shinde’s Sena faction gets ‘two swords and a shield’ as poll symbol

New Delhi: The Election Commission of India on Tuesday allotted the symbol of ‘two swords and a shield’ to Eknath Shinde’s faction of the Shiv Sena, ahead of the upcoming November 3 Andheri East assembly bypoll.

The move by the poll watchdog comes a day after the Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena was allotted the ‘Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena’ name for its political outfit.

Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde’s faction of the Shiv Sena had earlier in the day submitted ‘a shining sun’, ‘a ‘peepal tree’ and ‘a shield and a sword’ as options for its poll symbol to the Election Commission after its earlier choices were rejected by the EC.

But, the EC refused to grant permission to use the ‘trishul’, ‘rising sun’ and ‘gada’ as poll symbols pointing out that these were not included in the list of free symbols.

“The Commission has decided to declare ‘Do Talwarein aur Ek Dhaal’ to be a free symbol and allots it as the symbol to be set up, if any, by your group in the current by-elections and till the final order is passed in the Dispute Case 1 of 2022,” the Election Commission wrote in a letter to the Maharashtra chief minister.

On Monday, the poll body had allotted ‘flaming torch’ (mashaal) as an election symbol to the Thackeray faction of the Sena and recognised it as ‘Shiv Sena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray’. The Thackeray faction had earlier provided the ‘trishul’ and ‘rising sun’ as its options. However, the poll body turned down their claim saying that the choice of a ‘trishul’ as symbol for a political party had religious connotations.

Shiv Sena leader and now Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde had rebelled against Thackeray’s leadership, claiming the support of 40 of the Shiv Sena’s 55 MLAs and 12 of its 18 members in the Lok Sabha. After Thackeray’s resignation as chief minister of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress coalition, Shinde became chief minister with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

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