BRS’ car steers into trouble, again; SEC urged to junk look-alike symbols

Hyderabad: BRS leaders on Tuesday urged the State Election Commission to not to allow symbols such as ‘Chapati Roller’, camera and ship, which are identical to the party’s car symbol in the ensuing local body elections.

The party leaders said that the identical symbols dented the prospects of candidates of the party in 2023 Assembly elections. The BRS leaders pointed out that rectangular body of the camera further mimics the basic shape of the car’s front fascia and the flash bulge in front resembles the windshield or roof structure of a vehicle. Especially for voters who rely more on form recognition than object differentiation such as the elderly, rural, or visually impaired, the Camera symbol has been misidentified as a stylized or minimal version of a car. Further in case of the Chapati Roller, in the absence of detailed contours or contextual cues, this configuration was easily mistaken for a simplified car drawing, particularly one rendered from the frontal view.

BRS senior leader B Vinod Kumar said that the ambiguity increases when one considers that a large segment of the electorate may not recognize a Chapati roller as a domestic utensil, but may instead project onto it their familiarity with wheeled objects like cars or carts. In case of the ship, the portholes could be easily misread as headlights, while the central structure might be confused with a car’s bonnet and windshield.

The BRS leader said that the opponents of BRS had taken advantage of such identical symbols, which were available in the list of free symbols to confuse the voters in choosing and recognizing the BRS’ car symbol on the ballot papers. Often, the candidates who have contested elections on these identical symbols got votes more than the recognized national political parties.

A look at these symbols with the size in which they are displayed on ballot papers / EVM machines clearly show the identicalness of these free symbols to the ‘car’, the symbol of the BRS party. Thus, it can be clearly understood as to how candidates had been cutting into TRS votes in the past and damaging the prospects of the TRS party candidates in the elections. In this way, thousands of votes of TRS are diverted to such candidates, who were, obviously, motivated by our politically opposing parties, he said.

The BRS leaders said that identical symbols have the potential in causing confusion among the voters of the BRS and divert the votes to the so-called candidates of unrecognized parties, including Independents.

Because the size of the above symbols shown on the EVM were too small, it becomes very difficult for illiterate and aged voters, particularly from rural background, to identify the difference between these symbols and the car symbol.