'Indian Voters Can Distinguish Between Car, Road Roller & Chapati Roller' : Supreme Court On BRS's Plea Against 'Deceptive' Symbols

The Supreme Court on Friday (October 20) refused to entertain the petitions filed by political party BRS (Bharat Rashtra Samithi) challenging the decision of the Election Commission of India(ECI) to allot to other political parties symbols, which BRS claimed, were "deceptively similar" to its symbol (Car).

BRS filed a writ petition challenging the ECI allotting the symbols "Road Roller" to Yuga Thulasi Party and "Chapati Roller" to Alliance of Democratic Reforms Party respectively. It also filed a Special Leave Petition challenging the refusal of the Telangana High Court to direct the ECI to delete from the list of free symbols those which are identical to BRS's symbols.

As regards the writ petition, the bench comprising Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal observed that the petitioner has the remedy of approaching the High Court.

“You could've gone to HC. Breach of rules is also a ground for an election petition. Please see the grounds in the writ petition. Go to Section 100, the ground mentions violation of an order under the 1951 Act(Representation of People’s Act, 1951). You just want to postpone the election," Justice Oka said.

Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the petitioner, said that other parties have been allotted similar symbols, which can confuse voters.

To this, Justice Oka orally remarked, “You're concerned that one of them will defeat your party. They are totally different symbols. We don't think Indian voters are so illiterate that they won’t be able to distinguish between chapati roller and car and road roller and car.”

Ultimately, the writ petition was withdrawn with liberty to approach the High Court.

In the Special Leave Petition, Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora, contended for the BRS that the symbols, when displayed on EVM machines, would look alike to the electoral symbol of the petitioner which may confuse voters leading to unintended voting which would affect a free and fair electoral process.

She said that in the Sadiq Ali case, the Supreme Court has underlined the importance of election symbols. "In India, parties and people associate with the symbol. Earlier we had ballot paper, so today we have EVMs, size of symbol is that of a postage, they become indistinguishable," she argued.

However, the bench pointed out that the petition was filed with a delay of 274 days. Since the petitioner is a political party, it should be aware of the consequences of the delay, the bench said.

The SLP was therefore dismissed on the grounds of delay.

In the writ petition filed by the BRS before the High Court, it had taken objection to symbols like camera, chapati roller, road roller, soap dish etc., being made available. It had referred to Order 8 of Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 and the Subramaniam Swamy’s case which observed that in the case of an established political party, the symbol also has an emotional angle attached to it.

The HC took note of EC’s submissions and observed that “the symbols- camera, dolli, road roller, TV were already in list of free symbols when petitioner was recognized as a state political party and petitioner had opted car as its reserved symbol. It had also earlier deleted truck and iron symbols which were similar to the car symbol.”

Case title: BHARAT RASHTRA SAMITHI v. THE ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA

Citation: W.P.(C) No. 001187 - / 2023, Diary Number 43294/2023

For petitioner: Sr Adv Mukul Rohatgi, Sr Adv. Meenakshi Arora, AOR Dr. Vinod Kumar Tewari

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