ExplainedElections
Who owns Trinamool? How the Election Commission decides a party split, and why the Speaker's case is different
Rebel MPs must answer disqualification petitions by Tuesday, and the Election Commission hears the fight over the Trinamool name and symbol on 30 October. Two forums, two laws and two very different questions.
The short answer
When a recognised party splits, the Election Commission decides which group, if any, keeps the name and symbol under Paragraph 15 of the Symbols Order of 1968. In recent cases it has leaned on the test of majority, counting legislators above all, as it did for the Shinde Shiv Sena in 2023. That is a separate question from whether the 20 rebel Trinamool MPs lose their seats, which the Lok Sabha Speaker decides under the anti-defection law. The Supreme Court, hearing the Shiv Sena appeal this year, has questioned whether a legislative majority should settle who owns a party.
What is the Election Commission deciding on 30 October?
Which of the two rival groups is the real All India Trinamool Congress, and so gets the party’s name and its “flowers and grass” symbol.
One group is led by Mamata Banerjee, the party’s founder. The other is led by Ritabrata Banerjee, Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, whose camp says it has majority support in the organisation after the party lost this year’s Assembly election. The commission will hear both on 30 October in New Delhi.
In the meantime the party’s identity is frozen. On 17 September the commission ruled that neither group could use the Trinamool name or symbol in the bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar, held on 6 October. Mamata’s group fought as “Mamata All Trinamool Congress” with a football as its symbol, Ritabrata’s as the “Democratic Trinamool Congress” with an envelope.
Under what power does the commission act?
Paragraph 15 of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968.
The paragraph lets the commission decide, when there are rival groups in a recognised party each claiming to be that party, which of them is the party, or that neither is. Its decision binds every group.
The power was tested after the Congress split of 1969. The commission backed the group led by Jagjivan Ram, and in 1972, in Sadiq Ali v Election Commission, the Supreme Court upheld both Paragraph 15 and the commission’s use of a test of majority. The court also held that a symbol is not the property of a party.
How does it decide who has the majority?
In theory by looking at the party’s aims, its constitution and its numbers. In practice, lately, by counting legislators.
The Shiv Sena case shows how. In February 2023 the commission found the aims-and-objects test of no help, since neither side argued much about it. It set aside the party’s 2018 constitution as undemocratic, saying it concentrated power in a small group. That left numbers. Eknath Shinde had 40 of the 55 Shiv Sena MLAs and 13 of its 18 Lok Sabha MPs, and the commission gave his group the name and the bow-and-arrow symbol. A year later it took a similar view in the Nationalist Congress Party split and backed Ajit Pawar’s group.
Two cases, two forums
Is the Speaker’s case about the same thing?
No. It is about seats, not symbols.
In June, 20 of the 29 Trinamool MPs elected in 2024 announced a merger with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India and backed the BJP-led alliance. Abhishek Banerjee, the party’s leader in the Lok Sabha, asked Speaker Om Birla to disqualify them under the anti-defection law. The rebels must reply by Tuesday, 20 October.
That law protects members only if at least two-thirds of the original party agree to a merger. The rebels say they meet that bar. The Trinamool says a group of MPs cannot merge on its own, without the party itself. Either way, a ruling by the Speaker would not decide who owns the Trinamool, and a ruling by the commission would not decide who keeps a Lok Sabha seat.
Could the courts change the rules?
Possibly. The Shiv Sena decision is under challenge in the Supreme Court, and at a hearing on 5 August a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana questioned the weight given to legislators. “Any valid decision of the political party has to prevail over the will even of the majority of the legislature party,” Justice Bagchi said.
That matters for Bengal. Ritabrata Banerjee’s claim rests on the organisation, and Mamata Banerjee’s on her leadership of it. If the court tells the commission to look past legislative numbers to the party’s own structure, the Trinamool hearing could turn on very different evidence from the Shiv Sena and NCP cases.
What happens after the hearing?
The commission may rule for either group, or for neither, and the loser can go to court. As Ritabrata Banerjee put it after the September hearing, the Trinamool “is not the ancestral property of any family”. The commission now has to say whose property, in law, it is.