Gohar Ali Khan Imran Khan’s party chief

Islamabad, December 2

Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party on Saturday 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 Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) was founded in 1996 by the cricketer-turned-politician that someone else has replaced the 71-year-old as its chairman.

Gohar had 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 hand-picked 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. 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.