The Election Commission’s decision on Tuesday to freeze the election symbol of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), and thus treat both the parent party led by Pashupati Shumsher Rana and its splinter group led by home minister Kamal Thapa on the same footing, has confirmed public doubts about the EC acting as an impartial judge in the February 8 civic elections. However, it has permitted both to campaign as national parties. The EC has deprived the parent party of its constitutional right to use its established symbol, the Plough. Legally, a national party forfeits its election symbol only if it fails to secure at least three per cent of the total vote cast in the general election. But the EC has set a dangerous precedent of subjecting the election symbol of any recognised national party to its whim whenever a splinter group stakes a claim. Short of walking away with the Plough, Thapa has achieved his objectives: to rob the parent party of its permanent election symbol and to fight the civic polls under the banner of a national party.

Rana is the duly elected chief of the RPP. But Thapa’s claim to be its boss has yet to be tested legally. Obviously, the burden of proof does not fall on Rana, but on Thapa. Unless he can do so, Thapa simply cannot be accepted as the RPP’s boss. This legal principle is recognised everywhere. Therefore, the freezing of the symbol on the grounds that there was not enough time to decide conclusively on the case because the municipal election is close at hand cannot be defended. What the EC could have done, pending a final verdict, was to keep intact the Plough of the Rana-led RPP and allot some other symbol to Thapa’s party, as it had done in the contest for the election symbol Tree between the Nepali Congress and the Sher Bahadur Deuba’s breakaway group.

Rana had gone to the Patan appellate court to have the Plough protected but the court referred the case back to the EC with the directive that it should solve the problem based on thorough investigation and evidences. The EC has ignored even this directive. Now Rana has only one option left open: the Supreme Court. All the developments leading up to the RPP’s split had given many people reasons to believe that the parent party’s Plough might be hijacked. But it is an unhealthy sign that even the legal means have so far been unable to protect the RPP’s symbol. Now, stripped of its permanent symbol, the RPP will have to ride on the Peacock. But it has announced poll boycott in protest. Thapa will be holding the Vase.