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LAHORE: The powers of the ECP to withdraw the electoral symbol of a political party has been challenged before the Lahore High Court.
Munir Ahmad, a lawyer, filed a ‘public interest’ petition through advocate Azhar Siddique and assailed the vires of Section 215 of the Elections Act 2017, which provides for eligibility of a party to obtain election symbol.
It may be recalled that PTI contested the Feb 8 elections without an electoral symbol which it lost after a bitter legal battle over its failure to hold intra-party elections.
The petitioner pleads that the right to contest the election under a common symbol cannot be taken away, contending that the ECP being a constitutional body is not a court or a tribunal, therefore, any power wrongly assumed by it for taking away fundamental rights is illegal in terms of Article 8.
The hearing of the petition has been fixed for Feb 16 before Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan.
Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2024
Wajih Ahmad Sheikh is a Lahore-based correspondent for Dawn with over two decades of experience covering legal affairs and judicial developments. He can be found on X at @wajihsheikh.
