Islamabad: Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan's party elected Barrister Gohar Ali Khan as the new chairman, days before the top election body's deadline for the party to hold organisational polls to retain 'bat' as its election symbol.
This is the first time since the Pakistan Tehreeke-Insaaf (PTI) was founded in 1996 by the cricketer-turned-politician that someone else has replaced the 71-year-old as its chairman.
Soft-spoken Gohar, a lawyer by profession and someone who has been appearing in several cases against Imran Khan and the PTI was elected unopposed as nobody filed a nomination against him in the intra-party elections held in the north-western city of Peshawar, considered a stronghold of the party.
Gohar, 45, was handpicked by incarnated Khan after consultation with his loyalist lawyers who frequently meet him in jail where he has been kept since being arrested on August 5 after conviction in the Toshakhana case. Khan himself avoided filing the nomination due to conviction and disqualification.
The organisational elections were necessitated on the directives of the Election Commission of Pakistan that had given a 20-day time frame to the PTI on November 23 to retain the ‘bat' as its electoral symbol, ahead of general elections scheduled to be held on February 8.