ISLAMABAD: In response to the court’s comments in the ruling on the electoral symbol issue, the electoral Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has chosen to submit a civil miscellaneous application (CMA) with the Lahore High Court (LHC).
The electoral body took action after the ECP and one of its returning officers (RO) were found to be “not performing their duties in accordance with the law” on January 16 by an LHC Bahawalpur bench in response to writ petitions filed by several candidates over the election symbol allotment issue.
The court had sent notifications to Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan, bemoaning the fact that the electoral board was not awarding a specific sign to a candidate even though the symbol charpai was not given to anyone else.
The electoral body responded by instructing its law wing to file the CMA, highlighting that the candidates who had complained to the LHC about not being able to obtain symbols of their choice had “misled” the court by not bringing up the issue when they had approached the electoral body in the first place.
It also emphasized that, in accordance with Section 67 of the Elections Act of 2017, ROs are mandated to assign election symbols.
