Chennai: The Election Commission of India has allotted ‘gift pack’ as poll symbol to TTV Dhinakaran’s AMMK, following the Supreme Court directive that the party be given a common symbol for all its contestants in the Lok Sabha and state by-elections on April 18.
The apex court had however held that since the AMMK is not a registered party, its candidates emerging winners at the ballot would be considered as independents-which in effect would mean that the anti-defection law would not apply to them should they get ‘other thoughts’ post-poll.
The EC in a statement on Wednesday said the ‘gift pack’ symbol was picked from among the choices presented to it by the AMMK.
It may be recalled that after failing to get his plea for allotment of ‘pressure cooker’ as the AMMK symbol for this poll, as it was his winning symbol at RK Nagar Assembly by-poll, TTV had said he was confident of good performance by his candidates whatever be the symbol allotted to the party. He had earlier moved the Delhi High Court for directive to the EC to allot the ‘two-leaves’ symbol to his party, claiming that to be the original AIADMK, but this was rejected.
Following this, he petitioned the Supreme Court for the ‘pressure cooker’ but the EC informed the apex court that it was not possible to allot a reserved symbol to an unregistered party as several others could have sought ‘pressure cooker’ in different constituencies.
The court then asked the EC to allot common symbol for all the AMMK candidates and the Commission has now allotted ‘gift pack’ for the party. Though he launched the party in March last year, TTV chose not to register AMMK with the EC as that would mean giving up the claim over the ‘two-leaves’ symbol.
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