LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) intra-party polls were declared “unconstitutional” by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) order, which also removed the party’s famous bat electoral symbol. The case challenging the ECP judgment was dismissed by the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday.
A reserved ruling was given by LHC Justice Jawad Hassan, who also ruled that PTI leader Umar Aftab Dhillon’s case was inadmissible.
The PTI leader begged the court on Wednesday to overturn the commission’s ruling and force it to post the PTI’s certificate for the intra-party poll on its website in an effort to reclaim his party’s electoral symbol in Punjab.
He stated that the ECP could not challenge the legitimacy of appointments made within a party or intra-party elections because it was not a court of law.
The complainant’s attorney said that various strategies were being used to make things difficult for the PTI candidates, including preventing them from submitting nomination papers in the first place and forbidding them from using the “bat” emblem.
The PTI attorney claimed during the debate that the party’s election emblem had been restored by the Peshawar High Court (PHC). Justice Jawad responded by stating that the PHC’s decision on an appeal against the ruling was still pending.
Because the PTI leader was not personally impacted, the government’s attorney declared the plea to be non-maintainable.
The PTI loses both its leader and its electoral emblem as a result of the judgment. Judge Ijaz Khan’s single bench of the high court overturned the single bench’s stay order from December 26, which had permitted the PTI to use the word “bat” as its emblem and postponed the ECP’s decision until January 9.
