The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the plea of four smaller Tamil Nadu parties for issuing a direction to the Election Commission to allocate them the same symbol, which they had used in the last Assembly polls.
Refusing to intervene in the matter, a bench of Justices Altamas Kabir and Cyriac Joseph asked these parties to approach the EC as it has the “exclusive discretion” to decide any issue relating to the allotment of symbol. The interim direction came on the plea of DMDK of Tamil film star Vijayakanth demanding “drum” symbol, KMK seeking “gas-cylinder”, MMK and VCK pitching in for “candle” and “star” allocated to them by the EC last time. The interim order came after the EC has strongly opposed their move seeking to resolve the symbol issue through a judicial direction as poll panel’s counsel Ashok Desai on March 11 had said “courts have no jurisdiction” to decide which symbol has to be allotted to which party.