New Delhi, March 8: Reacting to the Election Commission’s decision to award the Nationalist Congress Party’s clock symbol to his opponent Sharad Pawar, Purno A. Sangma said the order has “violated” the fundamental rights of his faction.

Briefing newspersons, Sangma said, “We have full respect for the Election Commission but we are aggrieved by the order which ignored the past precedence of principles on which national parties were recognised. Moreover, we expected the decision before the announcement of the poll schedule”. He said the order said nothing about the status of the faction led by the former Lok Sabha Speaker. “Now no new parties can be registered after the poll schedule has been announced. Probably we will seek a clarification on the order”.

The Election Commission has rejected the claims by the group led by P.A. Sangma to use the symbol in the Lok Sabha elections. “In the present case, the commission is satisfied beyond any doubt that the group led by Pawar has far superior numerical support in the organisational and legislature wings of the party,” the full Election Commission said in its 26-page order.

According to Sangma, the NCP had fulfilled the criteria of a national party during the last Lok Sabha polls. “Out of the NCP’s presence in four states, our faction had the support in three states. But the Election Commission seems to have taken into account only the numerical strength of Pawar’s group in Maharashtra,” he claimed. During its hearings before the commission the Sangma group argued that Pawar, by taking an “arbitrary decision” to align with the Congress, had gone against the principles of the NCP. The dispute over the party symbol began on January 27 with Sangma stating that Pawar was removed from the position of NCP president at a national convention on January 24.