Akbar S Babar challenges fresh PTI’s intra-party polls in ECP

Disgruntled Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founding member Akbar S Babar filed two separate petitions with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to challenge the party’s intra-party elections for the second time.

The Supreme Court (SC) on January 13 upheld the ECP’s verdict regarding the party’s intra-party elections as invalid, leading the party to lose its ‘bat’ electoral symbol.

A five-member ECP bench headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja declared the PTI’s internal polls unlawful.

In the fresh petition, Babar has requested the ECP to declare the recent intra-party polls invalid too.

PTI’s fresh intra-party elections were held on March 3.

The beleaguered party’s federal election commissioner Raoof Hasan formally announced last Sunday that Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and Omar Ayub Khan had been elected as the party’s chairman and secretary general unopposed, respectively, in the intra-party polls.

Taking to journalists, Babar said that he moved the ECP against the “fresh fraud” of the PTI, adding that he was kept away from the intra-party elections.