Pakistan's Supreme Court on late Saturday night pronounced the intra-party elections of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) null and void, news agency PTI reported. It stripped the party of the 'bat' as election symbol, putting an end to the heated debate over the award of the iconic electoral emblem. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had contested the ruling of a two-member bench of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday, which reinstated the cricket bat as the PTI party's electoral symbol while confirming its elections.
After hearing the ECP's petition, a three-member bench comprised of Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, and Justice Musarrat Hilali reserved its judgement, which was announced late Saturday night.
The top court said in the judgement read by the chief justice that it would "set aside the PHC judgement and restore the ECP judgement" that had annulled the PTI intra-party elections and stripped the party of the 'bat' as its emblem.
The election symbol dispute began on December 22, when the ECP deprived the party of its electoral emblem for the February 8 election by rejecting intra-party surveys.
The party petitioned the Peshawar High Court, which issued an interim order suspending the ECP verdict on December 26.
The electoral authority, however, contested the verdict, and the high court reversed its decision on January 3.
The PHC also announced that the matter of the PTI bat emblem will be heard by a two-judge panel.
The two-member tribunal made its decision, reinstating the 'bat' as a PTI emblem, but the ECP contested it in the Supreme Court.
The bat is a longstanding emblem of the PTI, and it is claimed that depriving the party of its distinctive sign would force its candidates to compete on various symbols, causing confusion among party followers in rural regions on election day.
Furthermore, without a unified symbol, the PTI would be denied access to reserved seats in national and provincial legislatures, which are divided into parties based on proportional representation of seats gained in elections.
Barrister Khan has expressed alarm over the loss of such seats in the national and provincial assemblies in the lack of a party emblem, claiming that the PTI would suffer a massive loss.
In response to the Supreme Court's decision, PTI's Ali Zafar stated that while history will judge the result, the immediate consequence is that the PTI candidate would have to compete without a shared emblem.
“The court has taken away the symbol but the party is still a registered entity. As per our policy, all our candidates will contest as independent candidates,” he was quoted by PTI in its report.
PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Khan expressed dismay at the ruling, claiming that the PTI and its followers' political rights had been infringed. “It is another bad judgment by the Supreme Court,” he said of the verdict which was announced two hours beyond its scheduled time.