ISLAMABAD: With less than a month to go until the general elections, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has dispatched the electoral symbols of political parties to returning officers (ROs).
The ECP sent a letter marked as top priority to the ROs of both national and provincial assemblies. This letter included a list of election symbols for 145 political parties.
Emphasizing the allocation of symbols solely to candidates nominated by political parties, the ECP instructed the ROs not to assign party symbols to independent candidates.
To ensure clarity, the ECP also provided a separate list of election symbols specifically for independent candidates, instructing ROs not to assign symbols other than those mentioned in the list.
Notably, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is among the parties excluded from the list of election symbols.
The iconic “bat” symbol of PTI has been revoked due to the party’s failure to conduct intra-party elections, a prerequisite for qualifying for an election symbol.
Several parties have received symbols, including Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) with the “arrow,” Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) with the “sword,” Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz with the “tiger,” and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Nazriyati (PTI-N) with the “batsman.”
Additionally, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Parliamentarians (PTI-P) has been granted the “turban,” Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party (IPP) the “eagle,” Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) the “kite,” Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Pakistan (JUI-P) the “book,” and several others have been assigned symbols like “axe,” “scale,” “horse,” “human eye,” “tractor,” and “tree” for their respective parties.
I am an experienced writer, analyst, and author. My exposure in English journalism spans more than 28 years. In the past, I have been working with daily The Muslim (Lahore Bureau), daily Business Recorder (Lahore/Islamabad Bureaus), Daily Times, Islamabad, daily The Nation (Lahore and Karachi). With daily The Nation, I have served as Resident Editor, Karachi. Since 2009, I have been working as a Freelance Writer/Editor for American organizations.
