• Watchdog says bid to ‘deceive’ commission will be seen as breach of law
• PTI-N’s Dar refutes agreement with Imran’s party
• Raoof vows not to back off from contesting elections

ISLAMABAD / LAHORE: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has barred returning officers (ROs) from allotting election symbols of a party to the candidates of another party.

The orders were issued on Saturday to counter PTI’s plan to forge an alliance with its splinter group, PTI-Nazriati (PTI-N), and use the latter’s symbol, ‘batsman’, for its candidates.

“Whoever has PTI-Nazriati tickets should immediately submit them and take any kind of hindrance to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and high courts,” a post on PTI’s official X account said on Saturday.

In its order, the electoral watchdog prohibited candidates from seeking election symbols affiliated with parties other than their own.

“Numerous applications from candidates, attempting to manipulate the system, have flooded the Election Commission, prompting concerns of deception and violations of electoral laws,” it said.

The order stated that any attempt to deceive the ECP would be tantamount to a breach of law.

Referring to the Election Act, the commission highlighted that a candidate must present a party affiliation certificate and added that an individual cannot simultaneously belong to more than one political party.

In a related development, PTI leader Shoaib Shaheen submitted a request to the ECP to accept PTI-N’s tickets awarded to his party’s candidates.

The plea stated that PTI’s candidates were facing troubles in filing PTI-N tickets and urged the ECP to give instructions to the ROs.

PTI-N’s ‘change of heart’

However, PTI’s manoeuvring apparently hit a snag as PTI-N chief Akhtar Iqbal Dar denied his party allowed any other group to use its electoral symbol.

“PTI-N has nothing to do with PTI candidates, and any tickets issued using my party’s election symbol [batsman] are fake, and the ECP should take notice of this forgery,” Mr Dar said while speaking at a news conference at the Lahore Press Club on Saturday.

When Mr Dar was shown his party’s ticket issued to a PTI candidate at the presser, he denied that the document carried his signatures.

Answering a question, the PTI-N leader denied that he was doing the presser under pressure from any quarter.

Mr Dar also distanced himself from an alleged seat adjustment agreement on seven seats reached between the two parties last month and claimed he hadn’t met any PTI leader in the recent past.

Under the alleged agreement, both parties’ candidates were supposed to contest the election on PTI-N’s election symbol and follow PTI founder chairman Imran Khan’s instructions.

Stating that the party’s slogan is “death for corruption”, Mr Dar labelled all three major political parties — PTI, PML-N and PPP — as corrupt.

He said he had joined the PTI in 2007 and, in a matter of few years, found the party to be “corrupt”, and thus, he parted ways.

PTI’s reaction

PTI has termed Mr Dar’s presser a continuity of such press talk “under duress from the powers that be”.

The PTI announced that it will contest the Feb 8 elections whether it gets ‘bat’ as a symbol or not.

“I want to make it clear that we will be in the election as a party or independent candidates. We will not announce the boycott of the election come what may,” the party’s central information secretary Raoof Hasan said while talking to Dawn.

“It is unfortunate that we saw several press conferences during the last eight months which were a clear example of the collapse of the constitution and ineffectiveness of our judiciary,” he alleged.

Mr Hasan claimed his party had signed the agreement with Mr Dar some 15 days ago, and both party’s leaders signed it.

At the time of the agreement, Mr Dar had said that PTI was striving for a noble cause and assured his full support for the cause, claimed the PTI leader.

Ikram Junaidi also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2024