IJK moves court for common symbol

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy is scheduled to hear the plea on Tuesday after technical difficulties disrupted the proceedings on Monday.

Noting that the party was contesting at least 10 per cent of the seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, senior advocate ARL Sundaresan submitted that the Commission could still grant the common symbol as last date for nominations was only on March 19.

Though the application was made in time and the discrepancies pointed out by the commission were remedied, the timeline for granting common symbol was only directory and not mandatory, the lawyer said.

IJK was a registered party and hence a common symbol should be granted like it was done in the 2011 and 2016 polls, as it cannot field its 60 odd candidates in different symbols, he added.

However, Niranjan Rajagopalan, the counsel appearing for the Election Commission of India, submitted that there was no possibility now to grant common symbol as the time for such allotment was over.