EC response sought on plea for ‘Pressure Cooker’ symbol
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday sought the Election Commission’s response on a plea by AMMK leader T.T.V. Dinakaran seeking “Pressure Cooker” as a symbol for both the Lok Sabha polls and Assembly by-elections.
Seeking a response from the election panel, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice Sanjiv Khanna agreed to hear the matter on March 25.
The plea by Dinakaran and V.K. Sasikala, now jailed in a disproportionate assets case, was opposed by senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, contending that they (Dinakaran and Saskala) have floated a new party.
Rohatgi appeared for the AIADMK and insisted that the party’s symbol was “Two Leaves”.
It is believed that the AIADMK is opposed to Dinakaran getting the ‘Pressure Cooker’ symbol for both Lok Sabha and Assembly by-elections.
In a setback to Dinakaran, the Delhi High Court had on February 28 dismissed AMMK’s challenge to EC’s decision of awarding the ‘Two Leaves’ symbol to AIADMK led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Palaniswami.
After the AIADMK split into two, the EC recognised Palaniswami’s group as the real AIADMK and allotted it the ‘Two Leaves’ poll symbol.
On February 7, a top court bench of Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice Ajay Rastogi asked the poll panel to consider allotting a common symbol – Pressure Cooker – to the Dinakaran-led AMMK.