The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has scheduled the hearing of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) intra-party election case for September 18 (Wednesday).
The polls supervisory body issued notices to PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and the party's information secretary Raoof Hassan to present their arguments before the ECP's bench hearing the matter.
The case dates back to last year when the ECP revoked the party's bat symbol over unlawful elections within the party. It is important to know that intra-party elections were held by the party on June 9, 2022.
It was then annulled by the ECP in December 2023 as the case was dragged for around one-and-a-half year. Later, the Supreme Court also upheld the ECP's decision to deprive the opposition party of its iconic bat symbol that forced the opposition party candidates to contest the February 8 general elections as independents.
Afterwards, the PTI then held another intra-party elections in March this year — which too were challenged in the electoral body.
Earlier this month, the former ruling party suffered a setback after the ECP rejected its petition seeking delay in the hearing of the case about its intra-party polls till the issuance of clarification by the Supreme Court (SC) on its July 12 ruling on the reserved seats case.
The electoral body, in its verdict, said that the PTI had already delayed the issue of intra-party polls a lot and it wouldn't be appropriate to defer the matter any further.
The 10-page ECP order, authored by ECP Member Sindh Nisar Ahmed Durrani, rejected all four applications of the PTI. Through four separate applications, the PTI had questioned ECP’s jurisdiction to look into intra-party elections, asked it to issue directions to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to return the record taken away during a raid at the party’s central secretariat and sought adjournment of the intra-party polls case till the detailed judgment of Supreme Court in reserved seats case, and receipt of the guidelines from the Supreme Court sought by the ECP to implement the verdict in the same case.
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