NCP symbol war: Sharad, Ajit Pawar present their cases to EC — next hearing on Oct 9

Ajit Pawar argued that his faction commanded substantial support across the NCP's organisational and legislative wings, urging the Election Commission to recognise his faction as the genuine political party.

"Under the circumstances, the petitioner submits that he enjoys overwhelming support in the Organisational Wing as well as Legislative Wing of the NCP and therefore the present petition may be allowed by the Hon'ble Commission by recognising the faction led by the petitioner to be the real political party," Ajit Pawar said in his submission to the EC.

Following the hearing, Singhvi, representing the Sharad Pawar faction, dismissed Ajit Pawar's claims as baseless.

“We appeared (before EC) today, the hearing went for over two hours. The first part of the hearing went for an hour where we said that we are obliged to determine as a threshold issue whether there is a dispute or not," he said.

The NCP split on July 2 this year after Ajit Pawar and eight MLAs joined the Eknath Shinde government comprising the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Two days before rebelling against uncle Sharad Pawar to join the Maharashtra government in early July, Ajit Pawar had approached the Election Commission on June 30, staking claim to the party name as well as symbol. He subsequently declared himself as the party president with the support of 40 lawmakers.

Now, since each group is claiming to be the party, the matter required a substantive determination by the commission, a functionary was quoted by PTI as saying.

After due consideration of the totality of information available on record, the commission arrived at the conclusion that there are two rival groups in the NCP — one led by Sharad Pawar and the other by Ajit Pawar, the functionary said citing provisions of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order.

In July, the poll body directed both Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar to share documents submitted to the polling body with each other. This is the first hearing of the case before ECI.

The EC hearing came as the Sharad Pawar-led faction told the poll body earlier that there was no dispute in the party, except that a few mischievous individuals have defected from the organisation for their personal ambitions.