By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) dealt a major blow to the former ruling party led by cricket star Imran Khan on Saturday, stripping it of its trademark bat symbol just weeks before a crucial general election.
The three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, ruled that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had violated its own constitution and election laws by holding flawed internal elections, and upheld the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to revoke the party’s symbol.
The court declared the Peshawar High Court (PHC) order that had restored the bat symbol to the PTI on Wednesday as “null and void”.
The PTI, which had ruled the country from 2018 to 2021, had campaigned under the bat symbol since its formation in 1996. The symbol had become a popular emblem of the party and its jailed leader.
The PTI candidates will now have to run as independents with different symbols in the upcoming election, scheduled for February 8, which are expected to be a close contest between the PTI and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
Analysts say the court order could hurt the PTI’s chances of retaining its support base and mobilizing its voters in a country where literacy is less than 30 percent and voters recognize parties through their election symbols.
The chief justice said the ECP had not acted with malice or discrimination against the PTI, but had followed the law and the constitution.
“The ECP has been calling upon the PTI to hold its intra-party elections since May 24, 2021 and at that time the PTI was in the federal government and in some provinces. … Therefore, it cannot be stated that ECP was victimising PTI.”
“Nonetheless we wanted to satisfy ourselves that the ECP had not acted mala fide of ulterior reason or that PTI was discriminated against; it transpired that ECP had passed orders against 13 other registered political parties which were far more severe than the order passed against PTI.”
Justice Isa said the ECP had also taken action against 13 other registered political parties for similar violations, and that the court had upheld the ECP’s decision to delist one of them, the All Pakistan Muslim League, on January 12.
“The ECP wanted to ensure that the PTI holds intra-party elections for mere production of a certificate stating that such elections were held would not suffice to establish that intra-party elections had been held when a challenge was thrown to such an assertion; nor in our opinion should ECP concerned itself with minor irregularities in the holding of political parties’ elections.”
The ECP had revoked the PTI’s symbol on December 22, citing violations of the party’s constitution and election laws in its internal elections. The PTI had challenged the ECP’s order in the PHC, which declared the ECP’s order as “illegal, without any lawful authority and of no legal effect”.
However, the ECP did not accept the PHC’s verdict and filed an appeal in the Supreme Court on Thursday, challenging the PHC’s jurisdiction and authority over the matter.
The Supreme Court took up the case on an urgent basis and delivered its judgment on Saturday, siding with the ECP and rejecting the PTI’s claim to the bat symbol.
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