PESHAWAR   -  The Peshawar High Court (PHC) here on Tuesday adjourned the Election Commission of Pakistan’s petition challenging its single bench ruling on Pak­istan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s electoral ‘bat’ symbol and intra-party elections till today.

A single-member bench comprising PHC’s Jus­tice Ijaz Khan conducted the hearing and reserved the verdict. However, the PTI lawyers did not ap­pear before the court and later requested to hear them before deciding the plea. The electoral body had filed a review petition at Peshawar High Court against its December 26 verdict, which had sus­pended the ECP’s order and restored the party’s ‘bat’ symbol till a final decision in the case.

ECP, in its order, had declared PTI’s intra-party polls “illegal” and stripped it of using the ‘bat’ sym­bol. Following its order, PTI had approached the PHC seeking to restore its party symbol ahead of the general elections scheduled to be held on Feb­ruary 8, 2024. In its petition, the ECP requested the court to review the PTI’s intra-party elections and its decision related to the election symbol.

The ECP’s lawyer argued that the body had filed a review plea against the high court’s order and added that the ECP also issued a notice to the PTI in this regard.

He claimed that PTI did not conduct the in­tra-party elections properly and that questions were raised on ECP’s powers. The ECP lawyer said that the single bench suspended ECP’s or­der and issued a stay order without hearing the electoral body’s arguments. The stay order grant­ed by PHC was not an interim relief but is tan­tamount to the final verdict on the matter. The court adjourned the hearing till today.