Akbar S. Babar decides to challenge PTI’s intra-party election

ISLAMABAD: Akbar S Babar, founding member of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has decided to challenge the intra-party election, scheduled to be held on December 2 as per the directives of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), ARY News reported on Friday.

Speaking on ARY News programme’ ‘Sawal Yeh Hai’, Babar said, as part of the founding members, he was involved in structuring the PTI constitution, in which democratic culture was adopted.

According to the party’s constitution, he claimed, no chairman can be elected more than two times while its term would be not more than three years. “Our aim was to make PTI an exemplary democratic party”, he added.

Akbar S Babar was of the view that every PTI leader has a right to contest intra-party election for party chairman.

Babar said, he also visited the party’s central secretariat in Islamabad along with others to “gain information about the intra-party polls, nomination papers and voter list”.

However, the PTI leader said, he was informed by the secretariat staff that “they do not have nomination papers, voter list and election rules”.

Akbar S Babar said he wanted to take party in the intra-party elections, but the “secretariat staff and told us that nomination papers, voter list and election rules do not exist”.

In this regard, Babar said that he would approach the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and present all these facts of the “irregularities”.

It is pertinent to mention here that PTI had announced that the intra-party election will be held on December 2 (Saturday) as per the directives of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

The ECP had last week ordered the PTI to hold intra-party elections within 20 days to retain the bat as its poll symbol.

Earlier in the day, Barrister Gohar Ali Khan – who was nominated for the slot of PTI chairman, submitted his nomination papers.

تحریک انصاف کے انٹراپارٹی انتخابات کیلئے کاغذاتِ نامزدگی کی وصولی کے عمل کا آغاز کر دیا گیا

بانی چیئرمین عمران خان کے نامزد کردہ امیدوار برائے چیئرمین بیرسٹر گوہر علی خان نے اپنے کاغذاتِ نامزدگی جمع کروا دیے

کاغذاتِ نامزدگی ریٹرننگ افسر سردار مصروف خان ایڈووکیٹ نے وصول کئے…

— PTI (@PTIofficial) December 1, 2023

The PTI had announced that Imran Khan would not be contesting intra-party polls due to legal problems and Gohar would contest the elections in his stead as a “stopgap arrangement”.

According to a statement issued on X, Gohar’s nomination papers were received by Returning Officer Advocate Sardar Bharji Khan while PTI Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Advocate Niazullah Niazi was also present.