ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party suffered a major blow right ahead of the national polls after the country’s top court ruled on Saturday it was not eligible to retain “cricket bat” as its symbol after its failure to hold intraparty elections as per the law.
The development comes weeks before the Feb. 8 general elections. The PTI leaders will now contest the national polls as independent candidates using different symbols. The top court’s ruling will also deny the party a share in the reserved seats for women and religious minorities in parliament which are distributed among political factions on the basis of total seats won in the general elections.
The PTI became embroiled in a legal battle to retain the “cricket bat” after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) revoked it on December 22, citing its failure to hold intraparty polls as per the relevant laws.
The PTI challenged the decision in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) and secured a favorable verdict before the ECP petitioned the Supreme Court.
“This [ECP] petition is converted into an appeal and allowed by setting aside the impugned order and judgment of the PHC,” the top court said in a five-page short order following a two-day hearing. “Resultantly, the order of the ECP dated 22 December 2023 is upheld.”
The court also rejected the PHC judgment that the election commission did not have “any jurisdiction to question or adjudicate the Intra Party Elections of a political party.”
“If such an interpretation is accepted it would render all provisions in the [Elections] Act requiring the holding of intraparty elections illusory and of no consequence and be redundant,” the short order said.
Speaking to reporters after the judgment, PTI leader Barrister Gohar Khan said the party candidates would contest the election as independents, adding that a strategy would be devised to keep them all united.
“We already knew about the judgment, and we were prepared for it,” he added.
During the hearing, PTI counsel Barrister Ali Zafar called the intraparty elections legitimate, adding the ECP had no jurisdiction or authority to deprive any party of its symbol.
As per the election schedule, the ECP was set to allocate election symbols to all contesting candidates participating in the upcoming elections.
Earlier in the day, the PTI directed all nominees to submit the certificates of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Nazriati (PTI-N) party, which uses the election symbol of a “batsman,” with the returning officers to contest the Feb. 8 polls.
Khan’s party claimed it had forged an election alliance with PTI-N and was going to utilize its symbol for the candidates. The PTI-N was registered by a PTI dissident, Akhtar Iqbal Dar, with the ECP in 2016 and got a different election symbol to contest the polls.
Hours later, however, Dar denied issuing any ticket to PTI candidate at a news conference in Lahore.
“I don’t know where they took the tickets from,” he said. “I can’t understand how the tickets were drafted and why.”
