Kolkata: Calcutta High Court on Thursday pulled up Election Commission for allotting ‘envelope’ symbol — used by Indian Secular Front in the 2026 assembly election — to Democratic Trinamool Congress for the Oct 6 bypoll, and berated the commission for “creating trouble” and forcing parties to start legal proceedings thereby “burdening” the court.“Really fed up with the authority…. Once the elections start, you start creating trouble. Then parties come to court, putting burden on the court,” the high court told EC’s counsel.“Authorities should act impartially and fairly,” Justice Krishna Rao told the poll panel and questioned why it had to choose ‘envelope’ from among 183 symbols to give to another party. The angry judge asked why EC was getting into disputes and ruffling parties to create legal proceedings. “Is this the way it works?” he asked.Nawsad Siddiqui-led ISF, which won the Bhangar seat in assembly elections, had moved the high court praying for a direction to EC to freeze the ‘envelope’ symbol. After allotting ‘envelope’ to Democratic Trinamool Congress, EC gave ISF the ‘almirah’ symbol for the bypolls.“Our voters will be confused. We fought the 2026 assembly election using ‘envelope’ and we are also contesting the bypolls,” ISF’s counsel and senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya told the judge.EC’s counsel argued that ISF is a registered unrecognised party and such parties do not have reserved symbols. ISF was given ‘envelope’ twice, the last being the 2026 assembly election. ISF countered that the by-election was a continuation of the assembly election.When Justice Rao asked if ISF had applied for a symbol for the bypoll, its counsel said there was no new notification asking political parties to submit Form 10b for allotment of symbols.Justice Rao said, “If you (EC) find that just four months back the symbol was used by one political party, for the by-election why did you choose that particular symbol? You could have kept it reserved like the others. Why did you not keep it reserved?”The matter will be heard again on Friday.
