ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was dealt another blow on Wednesday when a high court upheld an earlier decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to strip the party of its cricket bat symbol.
Pakistan’s election oversight body on Dec. 22 ruled that intraparty polls of Khan’s PTI party, held last month, violated its regulations and the country’s election laws, declaring them null and void. As a result, the ECP stripped the party of its electoral symbol.
The PTI approached the Peshawar High Court (PHC) against the ECP’s decision. On Dec. 26, the PHC suspended the ECP’s decision and ruled the party could retain its bat symbol.
The ECP filed a review petition on Saturday in the PHC against the order. The election regulator’s lawyers argued the court had overstepped its jurisdiction by suspending the commission’s declaration regarding the PTI’s intra-party polls and stripping it of the bat symbol.
“The Peshawar High Court has announced its decision, the bat symbol has been taken back [from the PTI],” Khan’s lawyer Naeem Haider Panjutha wrote on social media platform X.
“The ECP’s decision has been restored but the nation should not be disappointed. We will be victorious on Feb. 8, God willing.”
PTI Chairman Gohar Khan told reporters in Rawalpindi that the party would challenge the ECP’s decision in the Supreme Court.
“If even the Supreme Court does not reinstate our bat symbol, then obviously, every independent candidate is allotted his/her symbol,” Khan said.
“This will confuse the voters and they will also be disenfranchised,” he said, adding that whichever party wins the polls, “democracy will be the loser.”
Khan said Pakistan’s economy will suffer if free, fair, and transparent polls are not held in the country and that questions over the legitimacy of elections will also be raised.
The PTI chairman ruled out any chance his party would boycott the upcoming elections scheduled for Feb. 8. “We are not going to go toward a boycott in any scenario,” Khan said. “We will also plead with the Supreme Court that if they cannot allot us the bat symbol, then give us another.”
Election symbols are crucial in Pakistan where the adult literacy rate is just 58 percent, according to World Bank data.
The bat symbol is reflective of ex-PM 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.
Khan, who is in prison since August after being convicted in a graft case, 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.
The Pakistani military, the election regulator, and the caretaker government deny his allegations.
