The Lahore High Court (LHC) has dismissed a petition challenging the Election Commission of Pakistan's (ECP) judgment deeming Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) intra-party polls unconstitutional," a move that also stripped the party's famous bat electoral symbol.
The reserved verdict was announced by LHC Justice Jawad Hassan, who ruled that PTI leader Umar Aftab Dhillon's petition was inadmissible.
On Wednesday, the PTI leader seeking to reclaim his party's electoral symbol in Punjab requested the court overturn the commission's judgment and direct it to publish the PTI's certificate for the intra-party poll on its website.
The petitioner claimed that the symbol was unjustly revoked since intra-party elections were outside of the electoral body's authority. He stated that the ECP was not a court of law and that it could not challenge the legitimacy of appointments inside a party or intra-party elections.
The complainant's lawyer stated that various strategies were being used to create obstacles for PTI candidates, such as preventing them from filing nomination papers and subsequently forbidding them from using the 'bat' symbol.
During the hearing, a PTI lawyer asserted that the Peshawar High Court (PHC) had reinstated the party's election symbol. Following that, Justice Jawad stated that the PHC judgment on an appeal against the order was still waiting.
The government's lawyer deemed the petition inadmissible, saying that the PTI leader was not personally affected.
The PHC had reinstated the Election Commission's December 22 ruling declaring the PTI's intra-party elections unlawful the day before.
The decision deprives the PTI of its head and its electoral symbol. The high court's single bench, led by Justice Ijaz Khan, annulled the single bench's December 26 stay order, which suspended the ECP's ruling until January 9 and permitted the PTI to use the 'bat' as its election symbol.