ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has petitioned the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Tuesday in a bid to regain its famous electoral symbol of the cricket bat, former chairman Barrister Gohar Khan said. 

Pakistan’s election oversight body on Dec. 22 ruled that the PTI’s intraparty polls held earlier this month violated regulations and declared them null and void. As a result, the ECP stripped the party off its electoral symbol, the bat. 

The judgment came days after a disgruntled PTI leader, Akbar S. Babar, challenged the PTI’s intraparty elections in the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), urging the watchdog to declare the exercise null and void for violating rules. Babar said the PTI had neither displayed a final list of candidates nor was any paperwork done for the polls. 

The PTI had reacted strongly to the ECP’s decision, describing it as a “disgusting and shameful attempt” to stop the party from contesting elections. 

“Even if there is a single bench in the Peshawar High Court, it can grant us interim relief,” Gohar Khan told reporters.. “We have filed the petition, our plea is that the case be heard today as it is a very important matter,” he added.

Gohar Khan said Pakistan’s Supreme Court has said that it is the right of every political party to contest elections on its electoral symbol. 

“If a political party does not contest elections on its symbol, then who will happen a total of 227 reserved seats go to,” he asked. “These votes will also affect the elections of the president, the prime minister and the chief ministers.”

Khan’s former aide and the leader of a breakaway faction of the PTI, Pervez Khattak, said during a news conference on Monday that his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Parliamentarian (PTI-P) group was offered the bat symbol but he had refused to take it. 

Khattak did not elaborate who had allegedly made the offer. 

The ECP took to social media platform X on Monday night to clarify it had not offered the bat symbol to either Khattak or any other political entity. 

“The election commission did not offer the electoral symbol of the “bat” to anyone, including Chairman PTI-P Pervez Khattak,” it wrote. 

The bat is reflective of Khan’s past as a successful cricketer, who led Pakistan to their only 50-over World Cup win in 1992, propelling him to an unrivaled position among the country’s cricket greats. 

Political analysts told Arab News last week that without the bat symbol, the PTI’s candidates would have to contest the upcoming elections scheduled for Feb. 8 as independent candidates. 

“The PTI can still challenge the judgment in the superior judiciary for relief, otherwise this would be a huge setback to it ahead of the elections,” political analyst Amir Zia told Arab News. 

Khan, who is serving a three-year sentence at Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail after he was convicted by a trial court on graft charges, has accused Pakistan’s powerful military, the ECP, and his political rivals of colluding to keep him and the PTI away from elections. He denies any wrongdoing and says the charges against him are politically motivated. 

Pakistan’s military, the ECP, and the caretaker government have strongly rejected his allegations.