PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday accepted plea of former provincial minister and independent candidate of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Kamran Khan Bangash and directed the returning officer of a provincial assembly constituency to allot him electoral symbol of his choice.

A bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Shakeel Ahmad pronounced a short order and directed the returning officer of PK-82 Peshawar to allocate such a symbol to the petitioner which should be visibly different from the one allotted to a rival candidate also named Kamran Khan.

Advocate Syed Sikander Hayat Shah appeared for the petitioner and stated that the RO had allotted his client the electoral symbol ‘violin’ whereas another independent also named Kamran had been allotted ‘guitar’ as election symbol.

He argued that allocation of musical instruments to two candidates having same name on the same ballot paper would create problems for the voters. He added that both the symbols were almost identical.

Kamran Bangash complains he and his rival allotted similar symbols

He argued that the similarity of the name as well as the symbol will badly affect the petitioner because the voters will get confused due to same name and election symbols and there was every possibility that petitioner’s voters will end up casting their votes to another candidate contesting for the PK-82, which was against the fundamental, constitutional and election right of the petitioner.

He added that the petitioner had also given application to the RO for allotting him symbol of his choice, but the RO had not considered that request.

Election Commission of Pakistan’s counsel Mohsin Kamran Siddique opposed the petition arguing that both the symbols were different from each other.

The bench observed that on the one hand the party was without an election symbol and on the other hand the ROs had been allotting them symbols almost identical to that of other candidates.

The bench inquired from the returning officer concerned whether he was under instructions from any quarter to act in a manner that almost identical symbols were allotted to two candidates both named Kamran.

The RO replied in negative stating that they had not received any instruction from anyone.

The bench wondered that at this stage they had been acting in such a manner, what would happen in future.

The RO stated that the ECP had issued directives that the election symbols should not be changed to any of the candidates.

Justice Ijaz Anwar observed that he still couldn’t differentiate between a violin and a guitar then how an elder citizen would identify the symbol of his candidate when he would visit a polling station.

The bench observed that section 214 of the Elections Act clearly stated that the election symbols should be visibly and perceptually different from each other.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2024