Kolkata: Humayun Kabir’s Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP), which won the Rejinagar assembly seat in the 2026 elections, has lost its ‘whistle’ symbol, with EC assigning the party a ‘table’ symbol for the Oct 6 bypoll.Kabir won from both Rejinagar and Nowda seats on the ‘whistle’ symbol but later resigned from Rejinagar, necessitating the bypoll.The change comes amid a wider reshuffle of symbols by EC ahead of the Rejinagar and Nandigram bypolls. The ‘envelope’ symbol, used by Nawsad Siddique’s Indian Secular Front (ISF) in previous elections, has also been allotted to Ritabrata Banerjee’s Democratic Trinamool Congress. ISF has instead been assigned the ‘almirah’ symbol.Siddique has written to EC seeking restoration of the ‘envelope’ symbol and said he would approach the Calcutta High Court.Asked about the decision to allot the ‘table’ and ‘almirah’ symbols to AJUP and ISF, respectively, a senior EC official said unrecognised parties were allotted symbols from the list of free symbols.“Election symbols are reserved for recognised political parties. The ‘whistle’ symbol is permanently reserved for TVK after EC recognised it as a state political party in Tamil Nadu. For bypolls, it is the commission’s prerogative to freshly allot symbols to unrecognised political parties from the list of free symbols. These may or may not be the symbols allotted to them previously,” the official said.
