Peshawar: A high court in Pakistan Thursday ordered the election commission to decide on the organisational elections and allocation of the election symbol case of former premier Imran Khan’s party by Friday.
Announcing the reserved verdict, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) noted that the dispute over the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) intra-party elections had already been heard in detail by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), which had also reserved its verdict in the case.
The two-member bench of the PHC comprising Justice Attique Shah and Justice Shakeel Ahmed ordered the ECP to decide on the case in “accordance with the law” by Friday, the Dawn newspaper reported.
The court was ruling on a set of petitions by the 71-year-old jailed former prime minister Khan’s party, the report said.
The PTI had urged the PHC to direct the ECP to publish the results of its intra-party polls on the commission’s website, an exercise required to contest the upcoming general elections February 8.
Claiming that the ECP was delaying matters, PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Khan told the court that the party founded by Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician, would not be allotted the election symbol ‘bat’ if the election commission did not recognise the intra-party elections.
He said that the party’s candidates would be considered independent if they were not allotted the election symbol by December 22, which is the deadline for potential candidates to file nomination papers for general elections, according to the schedule issued by the ECP.
“We held intra-party polls and submitted the certificate to the ECP in seven days. The election commission has not yet issued their intra-party election results on its website,” he was quoted as saying by Geo News.
The PTI held intra-party polls on December 2 to retain the cricket bat as a party symbol, following an order by the ECP. Barrister Gohar Khan, a nominee of Khan, was elected as the party’s new chairman.
However, several petitioners led by PTI’s estranged former leader Akbar S Ahmad challenged the election in the ECP by blaming the party for carrying out a selection process in the name of party election, aiming at throwing out party workers to give the reins to a few lawyers ahead of general elections February 8.
Earlier this week, the top election body reserved its judgment in the case, and Wednesday, it reserved its judgment on a matter linked with the allocation of ‘bat’ as the poll symbol for the party.
PTI