At a press conference in Peshawar on Saturday, Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), expressed the party’s “deeply upset” at the ECP’s decision to invalidate the PTI’s intra-party votes and remove the party’s official symbol.
On the other hand, Barrister Gohar assured Express-News that the party has a backup plan.
He stated that to contest the electoral watchdog’s verdict, the PTI will go to both the Supreme Court (SC) and the Peshawar High Court (PHC).
The “Election Commission’s decision is very weak,” Gohoar remarked, adding that the PTI “will go to courts” to resolve the pressing issue.
He spoke about the general elections that will take place in February 2024 and how the party has told its candidates to file their nomination papers to run.
It should be mentioned that yesterday the electoral watchdog revoked the “cricket bat” insignia of the former ruling party, nullifying their intra-party elections.
The PTI intra-party elections were deemed “null and void” by a five-member court presided over by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja.
Within-party surveys
The PTI was warned by the ECP on November 22 that it would lose its eligibility to receive any other election symbol for the next general elections if it did not organize intra-party elections within 20 days to preserve the sign “bat” as its election emblem.
Barrister Gohar Ali Khan was elected without a single opponent in the intra-party elections ordered by the ECP on December 2. Imran Khan, the party’s founder, personally nominated the PTI leader for chairman.
On the other hand, the results were contested the moment the PTI sent the report of the intra-party polling to the ECP on December 5.
Following Islamabad resident Raja Tahir Nawaz’s challenge to the results, PTI founder Akbar S Babar—with whom he later had disagreements with the leadership—did the same.
He wrote to Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, requesting that the PTI not be permitted to use the “cricket bat” as their electoral symbol until they conducted open and honest elections within the party.
To oversee the new PTI intra-party polls, he urged the commission to designate an impartial third party observer.
The election watchdog had received fourteen petitions challenging the intra-party polls by the eighth of December. While the party was hearing the plea, the ECP served notice on them.
These applications were the basis for yesterday’s judgment by the ECP to invalidate the polls.
