Imran Khan’s party to 'merge' with SIC if election commission approves latest intra-party polls: leader

Islamabad: A top leader of jailed ex-prime minister Imran Khan’s party has said that his party would merge with the Sunni Ittehad Council if the election commission accepted its recent intra-party polls and returned its iconic poll symbol, a media report said on Friday.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Asad Qaiser in an interview with DawnNewsTV said if the party got back its cricket bat electoral symbol after the recent organisational polls, then both parties would merge and “remain as PTI”.

The Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) is a political alliance of Islamic political and Barelvi religious parties in Pakistan. It was joined by Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party-backed independents who won the February 8 elections.

When asked whether PTI-backed candidates who joined the SIC would remain in it, Qaiser said, “Yes, we will remain but we will also merge with it.” He explained that if the party got back its electoral symbol after the recent intra-party polls, “both [parties] would merge” and “remain as PTI”, rather than the current scenario of its candidates being a part of the SIC.

Earlier this month, the PTI announced that Barrister Gohar Ali Khan was elected as its chairman following fresh intra-party polls after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) rejected the organisational elections held in December last year.

The beleaguered party was forced to hold the election to elect key officeholders after its elections of last year were not accepted as legal by the ECP which also deprived it of its election symbol.

This was the third time that the party founded by the 71-year-old cricketer-turned-politician conducted its intra-party elections in the past two years. It had also held elections in June 2022, which the ECP had annulled on November 23 last year by terming them “highly objectionable”.

Answering another question, the 54-year-old former National Assembly speaker said the party held “many consultations” amongst it before joining the SIC.

Asked if such an arrangement would be allowed by law, Qaiser said they were consulting legal experts.

Speaking about Peshawar High Court’s verdict which rejected the SIC’s petition of not allocating its share of reserved seats in the national and provincial assemblies, Qaiser said the party intends to challenge it in the Supreme Court.

The bench, which heard arguments for two consecutive days, pronounced a short order on Thursday and rejected the two petitions filed by the SIC — which was joined by the PTI lawmakers to claim their share of reserved seats for women and minorities in the national and provincial legislatures.

There are 70 reserved seats in the National Assembly and 156 in the provincial assemblies that are allotted proportionally to the winning parties in the general elections.

The reserved seats were allocated to all political parties according to their strength in the assemblies except the PTI-backed SIC.

Though more than 90 independent candidates backed by Khan’s PTI won the maximum number of seats in the National Assembly, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto struck a post-poll deal and formed a coalition government earlier this month.