The Delhi High Court issued a notice to 26 political parties and the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday based on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed to restrain the opposition parties from using the acronym INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) for the alliance.
A Division Bench comprising of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Amit Mahajan sought a response from political parties and the polling body to the petition that was filed by activist Girish Bharadwaj through advocate Vaibhav Singh.
The counsel for the petitioner said that the PIL was with respect to the recent development of the respondent political parties who formed an “alliance using the name INDIA”.
The bench said that the matter required a hearing. Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma accepted the notice for the two central ministries and said that the response of the ECI would be “crucial”. The matter was posted for a hearing on October 31.
The PIL sought a director to the respondent political parties to prohibit them from taking up the acronym INDIA and sought a direction to the Centre and ECI to take action against the parties for using the acronym. It stated that the complainant, Bharadwaj, was aggrieved by the inaction of the ECI against the 26 parties.
It stated that on June 23, prominent leaders and members of 16 out of 26 political parties gathered in Bihar’s Patna to devise a strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha general elections in 2024 and formed an alliance without giving it a name. The parties decided to meet again in Bengaluru where they chose “the name of alliance and convenor of alliance”.
Following a closed-room meeting on July 18, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge announced the name of the alliance as INDIA at a joint press conference, the plea stated, adding that during the press conference, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asked the NDA and BJP if they could challenge INDIA and said that INDIA would win and BJP would lose.
The plea further mentioned that in the same meeting, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said, “Yeh ladai NDA aur INDIA ke beech me hai, Narendra Modi ji aur INDIA ke beech me hai (This battle is between NDA and India, between Narendra Modi and India)”.
Dragging the name of the country, Gandhi “very cunningly presented the name of their alliance and tried to show that the NDA/BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in conflict with our nation i.e. INDIA”, stated the plea.
This attempt by Rahul Gandhi “created confusion in the mind of common people that the upcoming general election of 2024 will be fight between political parties or between alliance and our country”, it added.
