NCP (SP) hopes to win battle of symbols | Mumbai news

PUNE: Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (SP) is fighting a peculiar battle in the electoral race, one that has more to with phonetics than politics. Party workers have been instructed to repeatedly refer to their electoral symbol as ‘Tutari Vajavnara Manus’ (Man Blowing Trumpet) to distinguish it from ‘Trumpet’, allotted to Independent candidates.

Pawar, while addressing voters in Baramati this week, emphasised, “Remember what happened in the Lok Sabha elections, especially in Satara and Dindori? This time, keep in mind—our symbol is ‘Tutari Vajavnara Manus’.

Not only do the two symbols have phonetically similar names, they also bear a striking resemblance to each other. This contributed to votes being split during the Lok Sabha elections in seats like Satara, while in Dindori, the NCP (SP) believes the confusion over party symbols shrunk the victory margin of their candidate.

Imagine the NCP (SP)’s utter dismay when it realised that almost every one of the 52 assembly seats it is contesting has Independent candidates who have been allotted the ‘Trumpet’ symbol! After the party approached the Election Commission of India (ECI), it received some relief.

Last week, the Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra instructed that the ‘Trumpet’ symbol in the free symbols list will retain its English name in Marathi as well, rather than being translated as ‘Tutari’. The NCP (SP)’s ‘Man Blowing Trumpet’ symbol will continue to be referred to in Marathi as ‘Tutari Vajavnara Manus’. Now the names of the two symbols will no longer sound the same.

“We demanded that the term ‘Tutari’ be removed for the free symbol. Changing it to ‘Trumpet’ in Marathi should help. Although it is only a partial solution, I appreciate the election office’s decision. We had demonstrated with data how phonetic similarities had impacted our results in the Lok Sabha polls,” NCP (SP) working president and MP, Supriya Sule, had said after the ECI’s decision.