The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan said on Monday that his party would file a review petition against the Supreme Court’s decision to deprive his party of bat as election symbol.
Speaking to reporters outside Adiala Jail, Gohar said the PTI would issue the final list of its candidates with their election symbols within the next three days. Conveying PTI founder Imran Khan’s message to the masses, Gohar said people should not panic; they should just secure their vote.
Gohar said that decision on the candidates for the “pending” constituencies would be taken soon. He said the Supreme Court’s decision to strip the PTI of the bat as election symbol affected the basic rights of 250 million people of Pakistan. He said it was a conspiracy against democracy that succeeded.
Gohar said the Supreme Court’s verdict has dealt democracy a very severe blow and it would unleash a new era of corruption in the country. He said the PTI would not boycott the General Election 2024 in any circumstances and it would file a review petition against the Supreme Court’s verdict, which deprived the PTI of the election symbol of bat.
He said that a five member bench instead of a three member bench of the Supreme Court should have heard the PTI’s election symbol case and decided if a political party could be deprived of its election symbol before the election.
The Imran Khan-founded party on Saturday night took a major blow ahead of the February 8 general elections as the top court deprived it of its sought-after electoral symbol in a ruling on the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) petition.
The country’s top poll organising authority had assailed the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) January 10 order, which had provided a relief to the former ruling party by restoring ‘bat’ as its electoral symbol.
After a day-long hearing, the apex court set aside the PHC’s ruling and upheld the December 22 decision of the ECP, that barred the PTI from keeping its electoral symbol for the upcoming polls due to irregularities in their internal polls.
