—— PTI’s Marwat leads public gathering at Karachi
—— Party complains of blockade of roads leading to Sea View
KARACHI: A day after failure in all-out efforts to retain its iconic electoral symbol ‘bat’, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Sunday kicked off its campaign for the upcoming national-level polls with a rally led by its central leader Sher Afzal Marwat at Karachi’s Sea View beach.
The Imran Khan-founded party lost the legal battle on Saturday when the Supreme Court announced its verdict in the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) favour, depriving the former ruling party of its electoral symbol, which represented the party supremo’s life as a cricketer, just days ahead of the general elections.
With the apex court verdict, came the expiry of the deadline for allotment of electoral symbols to the political parties and the country’s top polls organising body allotted different symbols to the PTI candi-dates, who will now contest as independent contenders in the February 8 general elections, after be-ing stripped of ‘bat’.
In Karachi, Marwat led the party’s first election rally this evening with a large number of participants in attendance. The gathering was announced by PTI leader Raja Azhar, who said that the party would begin its cam-paign from Sea View, which is a famous picnic point for Karachi’s citizens.
However, he complained that the police had placed barricades on the ways leading to the venue. Later, the traffic police issued a clarification that the main track along the Sea View beach was tempo-rarily blocked due to the political rally, but was restored soon after.
They said that there was no barricade on the roads towards the spot anymore.
The PTI took a major blow as the top court annulled the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) January 10 order, which had provided a relief to the party by restoring ‘bat’ as its electoral symbol, on the ECP’s plea. –Agencies
