Responding to an Election Commission of India’s (ECI) notice, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Trinamool Congress (TMC), and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Monday (9 September) requested the poll body to not revoke their national party status, reports Hindustan Times.

The representatives of the three parties, in a meeting with EC officials including the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora, sought a chance to improve their performance in the upcoming state assembly elections in Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Haryana this year, and Delhi in January 2020.

Mentioning about the rules amended by the poll panel in 2016, they said the current rules require for the review of national and state party status of political parties every 10 years as opposed to five years earlier.

The supreme poll body, citing the performances of these parties in 2019 general elections, had issued a show-cause notice, seeking their explanation as to why their national party status should not be revoked.

CPI’s D Raja, TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee, and NCP’s Majid Memon who represented their respective parties in the meeting defended their cases on different grounds. While the TMC said it was given the status only in 2016 and cannot be reviewed based on previous elections, Memon also claimed that his party had the potential to make a come back and should not be evaluated on the basis of last four-five years. Differing from this, the CPI tried to save its case reminding the ECI of party’s history and role in the freedom movement.

Taking their request into consideration, the Election Commission has agreed to have another round of deliberation and maintain the stats quo till the final decision.