EC Calls Both Trinamool Factions for Hearing: Inside the Legal Test That Decides Who Owns a Party

THE TEST OF MAJORITY THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DEFECTION

Paragraph 15 of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 gives the Election Commission a power most citizens don't know it has: when a recognised party splits, the EC - not a court - decides which faction gets to keep the party's name and symbol. That is exactly what is playing out with the Trinamool Congress this week and it is worth being precise about what kind of dispute this actually is.

The Rule As Written The text says the EC applies a "test of majority"

• a rule laid down by the Supreme Court in Sadiq Ali vs Election Commission of India (1971). It has two limbs. First, the legislative wing: how many MPs and MLAs does each faction command. Second, the organisational wing: how many office-bearers, at the national and state level, back each side. Both limbs matter because the framers of this rule understood that elected numbers alone can mislead - a faction could win a floor majority through defections while commanding no genuine organisational support on the ground.

The Rule As Practiced This is

where it gets interesting and where the TMC case has to be read carefully against a parallel dispute the same week - Shiv Sena's, now before the Supreme Court. In that case, the EC found the organisational wing test "unworkable" because the party's structure was, by its own senior counsel's admission, run through nominated appointments rather than genuine internal democracy.

It fell back on legislative majority alone. The Supreme Court has now asked whether that fallback is even safe when disqualification proceedings under the Tenth Schedule are pending against those very legislators. TMC's case is structurally different and that difference is the actual story.

This is not a defection dispute - no MLA is facing disqualification proceedings here. It is a pure succession dispute after an electoral defeat, which means the EC can apply both limbs of the Sadiq Ali test cleanly, without the complication currently troubling the Shiv Sena bench.

That is precisely why the EC is proceeding methodically - asking for additional documents from one side, scheduling both factions an hour apart rather than together - rather than rushing to a legislative headcount.

Why the Sequencing Matters Calling the

factions separately, an hour apart, is not incidental. It lets the EC examine each side's claim to the organisational wing without either faction hearing or reacting to, the other's submissions in real time - protecting the integrity of a test that depends on independently verifiable numbers, not a contest of narratives in the same room.

For an aspirant, the exam-relevant insight is this: "symbol dispute" and "anti-defection" are two separate legal tracks that get routinely conflated in commentary. One runs through Paragraph 15 and the Election Commission's quasi-judicial power; the other runs through the Tenth Schedule and the Speaker's disqualification power.

Knowing which track a given dispute sits on - and why - is what separates a memorised fact from a real understanding of how India's institutions actually adjudicate power struggles inside political parties.