By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has refused to recognise Barrister Gohar Ali Khan as the chairman of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, citing a pending legal dispute over the group’s internal elections that has left its leadership in limbo.
The decision, disclosed in a letter from the commission dated Nov. 26, came in response to a request from Gohar Khan seeking to incorporate newly elected senators into the party.
The move shows the continuing turmoil within the PTI, the party founded by the imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan, as it grapples with repeated challenges to its organisational structure. The letter informed Gohar Khan that the commission could not accept him as the party’s leader because the matter of the PTI’s intra-party elections remained unresolved. “After due deliberation, it was observed that the issue of intra-party election of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is pending before the commission due to the stay order obtained by the party from the Lahore High Court (LHC),” the letter stated. “Hence, in the above circumstances, the commission is not in a position to accept you as chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. Therefore, you do not have any locus standi, and you are informed, accordingly.”
Gohar Khan’s Nov. 13 application to the commission had sought to add senators elected from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly in July, after a protracted delay caused by litigation over reserved seats in the provincial legislature. Those elections, held on July 22, filled 11 Senate seats, with the PTI securing six: Murad Saeed, Mirza Afridi, Faisal Javed and Noorul Haq Qadri on general seats, Azam Swati as a technocrat and Robina Naz on the women’s reserved seat. The polling, which took place amid tight restrictions and allegations of vote-swapping to enforce party discipline, completed the upper house of Parliament more than 17 months after the seats fell vacant.
The PTI has conducted intra-party elections three times in recent years, but the first two were invalidated by the Election Commission. The initial polls, held on June 9, 2022, were voided in November 2023 after a lengthy review, with the commission ordering fresh elections within 20 days to avoid losing the party’s electoral symbol, the cricket bat. The PTI quickly organised a second round on Dec. 2, 2023, but that too was struck down on Dec. 22, 2023, following what the commission described as a detailed examination of the party’s internal processes.
It ruled that the PTI’s secretary general lacked authority to appoint a federal election commissioner, rendering the exercise invalid and forcing PTI candidates to run as independents in the subsequent general elections. The third intra-party election, conducted on March 3, 2024, prompted the PTI to seek judicial intervention. A five-judge bench of the Lahore High Court, led by Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza, issued a stay order on Oct. 18, 2024, barring the Election Commission from issuing a final ruling on the matter until it could submit a written response.
The court’s action followed petitions from the PTI and Gohar Khan challenging the commission’s jurisdiction to scrutinise the party’s internal polls and criticising what they called biased and arbitrary proceedings. The petitions also demanded the return of documents and equipment seized during a raid on the PTI’s offices by the Federal Investigation Agency.
Speaking at a news conference on Saturday, Gohar Khan addressed the commission’s letter, which he said he had received for the first time that day. He recalled the March 3 election and the party’s efforts to comply with requirements. “We filed documentation pertaining to it, but there was no [confirmation of] acceptance by the election commission,” he said. “Today, for the first time, I received the election commission’s letter in which they formally said that ‘we do not recognise you’. It is very unfortunate that they do not recognise the PTI.”
The dispute has unfolded against a backdrop of broader political friction in Pakistan, where the PTI has accused state institutions of undermining its operations since Imran Khan’s ouster in 2022. The Election Commission, for its part, has insisted on adherence to the Elections Act of 2017, which requires registered parties to hold periodic elections for office-bearers at federal, provincial and local levels in line with their constitutions.
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