The Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) will contest the upcoming elections under its historic banner of the sword, while the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz will use its traditional lion and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s symbol will be the bat.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) confirmed this information when it allotted 77 parties their electoral symbols for the upcoming elections.
The PPP had appealed to the ECP to award it its traditional banner of the sword, which PPP leaders claimed had been taken away from the party after the 1977 coup.
“PPP was formed in 1967. It fought the elections of 1970 with the symbol of the sword. However, after the martial law in 1977, the symbol was removed,” PPP’s Secretary General Nayyar Hussain Bukhari had told the ECP in the party’s petition.
“PPP has the right to this electoral symbol as it represents the sword of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto”, the PPP leader had asserted.
The PPP-Parliamentarians, meanwhile, will use the symbol of the arrow–which has come to define the PPP in the modern era–in the upcoming elections.
The PML-N and the PTI, on the other hand, will use their traditional symbols of the lion and the bat respectively.
The Awami National Party has been allotted the symbol of the lantern, while the Awami Muslim League will contest the elections using the symbol of the ink pot and pen.
Chief Election Commissioner Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza Khan had presided over the allotment of symbols, and had said that parties could ask for all those symbols that were not disputed.
MQM leaders Farooq Sattar and Amir Khan, meanwhile, also appeared before the ECP and beseeched the Commission to offer the kite as a symbol to the MQM. They claimed that the party’s dispute had nothing to do with the party’s symbol.
The Chief ECP, in turn, allotted the party their desired symbol.