Tiruvandrum, Mar 28:
A Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader reportedly warned this week that the party risks losing its famous Hammer, Sickle and Star symbol if it doesn’t perform well in the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.
K Balan, a CPI(M) central committee member and former Kerala minister, cautioned recently, “It is time to make sincere efforts to protect the party symbol.”
“Otherwise, the party will be forced to fight the elections on symbols like the octopus or pangolin in future,” he was quoted as saying while urging the supporters to work hard.
AK Balan was speaking at the inauguration of the Kerala State Financial Enterprises Officers Union (KSFEOU) leadership workshop in Kozhikode, Kerala.
He reportedly said that if the CPI(M) “fails to secure a certain percentage of votes and win seats in the upcoming Lok Sabha election”, it will lose its national party status and even risk losing its election symbol.
“The problem of losing the national status is that then the famed symbol of the CPM cannot be used, and then we will be at the mercy of the Election Commission who will allot a symbol,” Balan has said.
National party status only if …
The candidates set up by the party in any four or more States in the last general elections to the Lok Sabha or to a state assembly must have secured not less than 6 per cent of the total valid votes polled in each of those States. The party must return at least four members to the House of the People in the general elections from any state of states.
In the last general elections to the Lok Sabha, the party must have won at least 2 per cent of the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha, with any fraction exceeding half being counted as one. Additionally, the party’s candidates must have been elected to that House from not less than three States.
The CPI(M) has only three members in the Lok Sabha — two from Tamil Nadu and one from Kerala. The party secured 1.77 per cent of votes polled in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections.
The CPI(M) is currently in power in Kerala. In the 2021 Kerala Assembly elections, the party won 62 of the 140 assembly seats. However, it fell short of the eight seats needed to reach the majority mark. The party had the highest vote share, at 47 per cent.
