Peshawar High Court verdict: PTI leaders and workers heave sigh of relief

PESHAWAR: The beleaguered Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders and workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa took a sigh of relief on Tuesday when the Peshawar High Court suspended an earlier decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan and restored the party election symbol “bat” to the party.

“Depriving a political party of its election symbol means disqualifying the political party. It would have caused us serious damage as how can a political party contest elections without an election symbol,” PTI Peshawar region president and former provincial minister Mohammad Atif Khan said.

Atif Khan belongs to Mardan district and is having a long association with the PTI founding chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan. “We were left with no choice but to contest election independently. And had we contested independently, it would have deprived us of the reserved seats, which are 30 percent alone in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly and are given to the political parties only,” he argued.

Second, he said, it would have created confusion for their voters to identify the PTI candidates and their election symbols in case the party candidates contested independently.“At least we got some relief from the honourable court and believe that it would continue till the elections,” said Atif Khan.

“There is a debate about level playing field in the media these days, if PTI is deprived of its election symbol, it means the party is not even given a field to play. There should be equal opportunities for all the political parties and their candidates to participate in the election,” the PTI leader said.

According to Atif Khan, hundreds of party members had submitted applications for the PTI ticket in KP.

“In some places, 30 candidates applied for the PTI ticket in one constituency. This shows popularity of the party among the people,” the PTI Peshawar region president said.Other PTI members were having similar views about the court decision.

“It was the first good news that our ears heard after a long time. Judiciary is our only hope otherwise our political opponents would never like PTI candidates to contest elections with their election symbol “bat”,” said PTI provincial senior vice president and former housing minister Dr Amjad Ali Khan.

Dr Amjad Ali Khan belongs to Swat and like many other PTI leaders, he has been in trouble for some time and was arrested by the police, but got released by the court.

He said hundreds of their party members had submitted applications for the party tickets but it created uncertainty when the Election Commission of Pakistan deprived PTI of its election symbol “bat”.

“We were already in trouble, apparently due to hardships created for us by our political opponents as they can’t face us in the elections. Taking back our election symbol had angered our party workers and supporters,” he said.

He said their former party colleague, Pervez Khattak used to convince them to join them and would tell them that PTI would have to be deprived of the party flag and election symbol before the election.

Dr Amjad Ali Khan said there were still hurdles ahead for them to face in the coming days and weeks. “Scrutiny of our party candidates is deliberately being delayed to keep them away from the polls. I was called for scrutiny of my papers to Kabal tehsil on Wednesday. I have planned to go there tomorrow but today I received a call from the officials of the same government department not to come tomorrow as the officials would remain busy,” he complained.

Amjad Ali Khan said he had heard from reliable sources that some of the PTI candidates including he himself, former party parliamentarians Shaukat Yousafzai, Junaid Khan, Murad Saeed, Mian Sharafat, Shakeel Khan and Riaz Khan would be disqualified for the elections.