Staff Reporter
The Election Commission on Tuesday declared 253 Registered Unrecognized Political Parties (RUPPs) as inactive and barred them from availing benefits of the Symbol Order, 1968. The Poll Body said, additional 86 Non-existent RUPPs will be d from the list and benefits under the Symbols Order has been withdrawn. It said, there will be action against these 339 non-compliant RUPPs. The tally of defaulting RUPPs has reached 537 since 25th May 2022.
It may be recalled that the Election Commission had delisted 87 RUPPs and 111 RUPPs through orders in May and June this year.
As per statutory requirements under the Representation of the People Act, every political party has to communicate any change in its name, head office, office bearers, address, PAN to the Commission without delay. 86 RUPPs have been found to be non-existent either after a physical verification carried out by the Chief Electoral Officers of concerned States or UTs or based on report of undelivered letters or notices from Postal Authority sent to the registered address of concerned RUPP.
This decision against 253 non-compliant RUPPs has been taken based on reports received from Chief Electoral Officers of seven states Bihar, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. These 253 RUPPs have been declared inactive, as they have not responded to the letter or notice delivered to them and have not contested a single election either to the General Assembly of a State or the Parliament Election 2014 and 2019. These RUPPs have failed to comply with statutory requirements for more than 16 compliance steps since 2015 and are continuing to default.