The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed an appeal seeking a directive to political parties not to highlight on campaign trail schemes named after chief ministers and other political leaders as it would give undue advantage to the outfits at the cost of public money.

“We see no reason to entertain this petition. Accordingly, the writ petition is dismissed,” a bench of Justices S.A. Bobde and Abdul Nazeer said in an order.

The bench was dealing with a petition filed by two social activists from Hyderabad — Tudi Indrasena Reddy and Donthi Narasimha Reddy — that claimed that repeatedly drawing attention to such schemes was also in violation of a 2015 judgment of the Supreme Court that barred the use of state funds to promote the image of individual political leaders except constitutional functionaries.

The petitioners had submitted through advocate Sravan Kumar that despite the apex court ruling, several states continued to name schemes funded with public money after chief ministers or leaders of the ruling party.

The petitioners had claimed that this leads to “glorification of individuals at the cost of public money, (giving) undue political advantage and mileage to the party in power, crediting such individuals or political leaders, (and) misuse of public funds for furthering the political motives on the eve of the elections to get political advantage”.

It had alleged that such a practice also amounted to misuse of government powers and affected the fundamental rights of other political parties.

The petitioners had cited schemes such as the “KCR kit” in the name of Telangana chief minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K. Chandrashekar Rao.

In Andhra Pradesh, more than 50 schemes have “Chandranna” in their names, the petition said. Chief minister and Telugu Desam Party president Chandrababu Naidu is fondly called Chandranna.

The petition cited the examples of the Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics and the Aam Aadmi Polyclinics in Delhi.

In Tamil Nadu, a large number of schemes are named after “Amma”, as late chief minister Jayalalithaa was called. The petition referred to a similar practice in Uttar Pradesh when the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party were in power.