ISLAMABAD The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) continues to recognize the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) as a political party even though it no longer has an election symbol.
The PTI is listed as serial number 99 on the ECP’s list of “enlisted political parties” on its official website. On Monday night, someone visited the ECP website. Does this imply that PTI candidates running for office as independents after losing the party’s election symbol will have the choice to formally join or represent PTI in the national and local assemblies if they emerge victorious in the polls?
When contacted, senior attorney and former attorney general Anwar Mansoor stated that the PTI has been prohibited from running for office as a political party,
However, the ECP continues to recognize it as a political party and it has not been deregistered.
Mansoor stated that while PTI candidates can only run as independents after losing their party symbol, those who win as independents have the opportunity to re-join PTI following the election. The former attorney general went on to say that those who choose to join the PTI as a political party after being victorious in independent candidacies can be represented in the upcoming Parliament.
When contacted, former ECP secretary Kanwar Dilshad expressed surprise that the PTI remained on the ECP’s list of “Enlisted Political Parties.” According to him, a political party that loses its formal standing also forfeits its election symbol.
He added that those who are elected as independent candidates are not eligible to join the PTI, saying that “the political party’s registration with the ECP gets cancelled with the withdrawal of the election symbol.”
According to Dilshad, the PTI was no longer recognized by the ECP as an official political party; however, Mansoor maintains that there are other legal procedures that address the dissolution or deregistration of political parties based on formal references. The ECP spokesperson was contacted, but he didn’t answer a Whatsapp message or show up for The News call.
Invoked by the ECP to remove PTI’s election symbol, Section 215 of the Election Act 2017 states that in the event that the political party disregards Section 209’s requirements,
After giving it or them a chance to be heard, the Commission may declare them or them ineligible to receive an election symbol for the Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament), Provincial Assembly, or local government. In the event that this happens, the Commission will not grant an election symbol to that political party or combination of political parties in any future elections.
The aforementioned sentence simply pertains to the removal of the electoral symbol for “subsequent elections” and says nothing about the dissolution or de-registration of the political party. The question of whether independent candidates who are members of a political party that has lost its election symbol may join that party in Parliament after being informed that they have won is not addressed by the law or the constitution.However, in the event of reserved seats, the Constitution permits independent returning candidates to join political parties that have already won any number of general seats in the elections within three days of the names of the returned candidates being published in the official Gazette.
“(d) Members to the seats reserved for women which are allocated to a Province under clause (3) shall be elected in accordance with law through proportional representation system of political parties’ lists of candidates on the basis of total number of general seats secured by each political party from the Province concerned in the National Assembly:” states Article 51 (6)(d) regarding the seats reserved for women.
