Political parties outnumber election symbols

ISLAMABAD: As the ECP registered 19 more political parties on Tuesday, the number of political parties enlisted with the commission reached 216, outnumbering the available election symbols. The number of approved election symbols in 2008 was 147 and with the addition of 34 and deletion of eight, as proposed by the ECP, the total number of approved symbols has now reached 171. The ECP in its meeting on Tuesday decided to delete ‘cat’ from the list of symbols as was asked by the PML-N General Secretary Iqbal Zafar Jhagra. ECP Secretary Ishtiak Khan said though it was a fundamental right to form an association, standards had to be set to check mushroom growth of political parties. The ECP also decided to hear the PTI and JI, both of which want ‘scale’ as their election symbol. The cases of disqualification of MNAs Donya Aziz and Arif Aziz for possessing dual nationality were also taken up. staff report

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