ISLAMABAD – The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Saturday filed a miscellaneous application in the Supreme Court, seeking an expedited hearing of its petition contesting the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) January 3 decision that deprived the party of its iconic “bat” election symbol.
The PHC, on January 3, overturned the stay order granted by its single-member bench, reinstating the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) ruling, nullifying the PTI’s intra-party elections and revoking its election symbol. In response, the PTI has challenged this verdict in the Supreme Court.
The PTI’s application urges the apex court to schedule the hearing of its petition for Monday, citing the urgency and importance of the matter. Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, representing PTI, emphasized the significance of the election symbol, stating that failure to grant interim relief would exclude the party from the electoral process, causing candidates to contest using different symbols and potentially bypassing regulations on floor crossing.
The electoral symbol holds immense importance for voters in identifying their chosen candidate during elections. A lack of a unified symbol could lead to voter confusion, potentially resulting in the loss of votes for the PTI.
Failure to restore the PTI’s electoral symbol would compel the party to partake in elections without its emblematic “bat,” which party leaders view as a substantial setback, given its historical use in various polls.
The PHC’s six-page order highlighted that its previous decision had hindered the smooth electoral process supervised by the ECP. Consequently, the PHC revoked its interim order, directing the ECP to proceed with the election process as per its constitutional mandate.
This legal tussle stems from the ECP’s December 22 ruling, which declared the PTI’s intra-party polls as “illegal” and barred the party from utilizing the ‘bat’ symbol. Despite the PHC’s December 26 suspension of the ECP’s order and the reinstatement of the ‘bat’ symbol, the subsequent January 3 decision now compels PTI candidates to contest elections independently.
