The Sharad Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has filed a petition in the Supreme Court objecting to the continued use of the clock symbol by the Ajit Pawar faction in the upcoming Maharashtra State Assembly elections [Sharad Pawar vs Ajit Anantrao Pawar and Anr].
The Sharad Pawar camp contends that Ajit Pawar is creating “large-scale confusion” among voters by using the clock symbol, which has long been associated with Sharad Pawar himself. The plea claims, “[Ajit Pawar] has been leveraging the existing confusion in the minds of people due to the longstanding association between the ‘Clock’ symbol and the Petitioner.”
The Sharad Pawar faction has requested that the Ajit Pawar group be assigned a new symbol for the Maharashtra elections to prevent further confusion. The case will be heard by a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan on October 15.
The Supreme Court had previously allowed the Ajit Pawar faction to use the clock symbol under certain conditions for the 2024 parliamentary and Maharashtra state elections. This followed the Election Commission’s recognition of Ajit Pawar’s group as the official NCP after a party split. However, the Court ordered Ajit Pawar’s faction to include disclaimers in any election advertisements to clarify that the allocation of the clock symbol is still under legal dispute.
In addition, the Election Commission provisionally recognized the Sharad Pawar faction as a separate political entity, granting it the symbol of a man blowing a tutari (trumpet).
In the new application, filed on September 25 by advocate Abishek Jebaraj, Sharad Pawar has urged the Court to assign a new symbol to the Ajit Pawar faction to safeguard the sanctity of the clock symbol, which remains a matter of legal contention. The plea emphasizes that this would ensure fair elections and prevent any bad-faith attempts to exploit voter confusion. The petition argues that confusion could be heightened during the upcoming Vidhan Sabha elections, as the smaller constituencies would make voters more susceptible to misinterpretation.
