Mamata's Twin-Flower Symbol Frozen: How the Election Commission Settles Party Splits

The Election Commission has frozen the 'Jora Ghas Phool' — the twin-flower symbol that Mamata Banerjee drew by hand when she founded the All India Trinamool Congress in 1998 after leaving the Congress. Two flowers, one stem, growing from the same root. Unity was the idea.

Decades later, that stem has split. Late on Thursday night, both rival factions in the party emailed the commission lists of alternative names and symbols chosen from its catalogue of free symbols, ahead of the October 6 bypolls in West Bengal, including Rejinagar and Nandigram.

Until a final decision, the commission has done what arbiters usually do when two claimants fight over one heirloom: it has locked the heirloom away. For now, the Mamata Banerjee faction has been allotted the 'footballer' symbol, and the group led by Arup Roy and Ritabrata Banerjee the 'envelope'. Mamata Banerjee's side has prefixed her name to the party name; the other faction has used the word 'democratic'.

In its interim order, the commission said the time available was not adequate to decide which group is the real party. That question falls under Paragraph 15 of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968. The Indian National Congress, which Mamata Banerjee later left, faced the same question in 1969, and the way it was answered has guided the commission ever since.

How the commission decides

The commission's method for such disputes was forged in the Congress split of 1969. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had had enough of the old guard, and her faction elected its own president, Jagjivan Ram. The rival faction said it had already extended the term of S Nijalingappa as president by a year.

The commission weighed three tests: the party's aims and objects, its constitution, and majority support. It found that neither group could be differentiated on the party's aims, so the result was neutral. It said the constitution test was 'hardly of any assistance', given the expulsions on both sides, which again produced no conclusion. The third test, of raw numbers, found that Indira Gandhi's side had most of the party's MPs and state legislators, and most members of the All India Congress Committee and its delegates.

In January 1971, Indira Gandhi's group, headed by Jagjivan Ram, was declared the real Congress, entitled to its 'Two Bullocks' symbol. The Supreme Court later upheld both that decision and the commission's power to make it, using these three tests or any others it deems appropriate.

A name can outlive a symbol

Indira Gandhi's Congress won the Two Bullocks but preferred to fight on the 'cow and calf' symbol it had received in the interim. She lost power after the Emergency (1975-77), and after another split in 1978, her new Congress (I) had to give up the cow and calf as well. She then asked for the old pair of bullocks, but the commission had frozen that symbol.

Party general secretary Buta Singh was offered an elephant, a bicycle, and an open hand or palm, according to veteran journalist Rasheed Kidwai's book 'Ballot'. Over a bad telephone line, Indira Gandhi kept hearing 'haathi' (elephant) instead of 'haath' (hand), and kept refusing, until P V Narasimha Rao took the receiver and settled it. She was fine with the hand. Two years later she returned to power on that symbol, which has stayed with the party since.

What recent rulings show

For Mamata Banerjee, this history offers hope of a resurgence, but also carries an immediate worry: that the number of MPs and MLAs could become the sole deciding factor. Recent disputes have moved in that direction. In its 2023 order in the Shiv Sena dispute from Maharashtra, the commission set aside the party constitution, finding some amendments to it undemocratic, and could not conclude who held a majority within the party structure; it relied on the strength of elected legislators. In 2024, it followed a similar approach in the Nationalist Congress Party split.

For now, both Trinamool factions will contest the bypolls on borrowed symbols, while the twin flower waits for a final call.