The Janata Dal (United) is seriously contemplating to change its election symbol, arrow. The party is expected to move the Election Commission with the petition very soon.
This was revealed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday during informal talks with a handful of partymen and a group of media people in his Assembly chamber.
The immediate provocation for changing the symbol is stated to be adverse impact in many constituencies due to presence of Shiv Sena which has bow and arrow as its poll symbol. “We suffered in a number of constituencies due to the symbol confusion. In Shiv Sena’s symbol arrow is more prominent than bow and our voters due to confusion pressed the button of Shiv Sena,” said Nitish and added that this trend was more visible in lakhisarai and Gurua constituencies where JD(U) candidates lost with a margin of about 6500 votes.
Bow and arrow is also the symbol of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) but in the just concluded Assembly election Sena fielded over a hundred candidates while taking a stand against its Maharashtra ally BJP. In rural areas, political parties are identified more by their symbols than their nomenclature.
JD(U) sources said Sena inflicted more damage to JD(U) than BJP in this election. There is no reason why Sena candidates get over 50,000 votes in some constituencies in Bihar where the party has very little infrastructure and vote base, sources said giving credit to its symbol for fetching votes in a State where arrow is a popular symbol because it belongs to JD(U).
Nitish confessed that majority of the party’s grass root workers were in favour of changing the symbol and hinted that party may petition the ECI very soon so that a new symbol could be popularized before the 2019 lok Sabha polls.
Someone suggested him to seek the chakra (wheel) symbol of Janata Dal which was allotted to Janata Dal following the merger of many Janata Parivar parties in 1988. That symbol was later frozen. The JD(U), earlier known as Samata Party, had a symbol of mashal (flame), but as Nitish said, it looked more like a burning match stick than flame.
“We have come a long way with new nomenclature of parties and new symbols in the last three-four decades,” the CM said recalling contesting once as a candidate of Charan Singh’s Dalit Mazdoor Kisan Party, popularly known as Damkipa, with a symbol of woman carrying a basket on her head.
Parties need to popularise their symbols among the voters particularly the illiterate or semi-literate rural masses who know the parties not by their names but with their symbols. In rural Bihar BJP is popularly known as phool chhap party.