Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Aug 9: High Court today reserved its orders to the plea filed by the National Conference for issuance of election symbol “Plough” for the party for contesting the upcoming election to the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC).
The party through its General Secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar has approached the court challenging the notification dated 26.7.2023 excluding the allocation of election symbol for upcoming general elections of LAHDC scheduled to be held in August or September.
The party is also aggrieved with the action by withholding the notification of election symbol which as per the petitioner-party is already allotted and reserved for it. The party counsel Sharik Reyaz argued that after the abrogation of Article 370 and consequent upon the application of Re-organization Act, the division comprising of Leh and Kargil districts were made a separate Union Territory without legislature and for the upcoming LAHDC election, the election symbol allotted to the petitioner-party has to be formally notified and in this regard a representation was submitted to the Chief Election Officer Ladakh UT.
He argued that without considering the representation so submitted, the impugned notification came to be issued by the Administrative Secretary Election Department Ladakh by denuding and depriving the party to contest the upcoming election on the symbol already allotted to it.
The counsel representing the Ladakh UT objected to the plea of the party by submitting that it is not a registered political party for Ladakh UT but it registered as a state political party of J&K UT and its symbol is reserved for the said UT.
The counsel also argued that the notification issued on May 15 issued by ECI contains the list of National and State Political parties recognized by ECI and the said notification has not been challenged by the petitioner-party.
“The LAHDC provides only the political parties recognized by the ECI and have reserved symbols as delineated in the said notification which is evident that the petitioner-party is not a recognized political party in Ladakh UT”, he argued.
With regard to the notification under challenged, he added that allotment symbols belonging to the National/State parties and in-terms of rules of LAHDC it is clearly spelt out that a political party operating in the council areas shall mean a political party recognized by the ECI as a national party or state party of this state as on the last date of making nominations as such the whole process of challenging the notification is totally bad in law.
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