Gohar Ali Khan elected unopposed as new chairman of Imran Khan's PTI

Islamabad: Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party on Saturday elected Barrister Gohar Ali Khan as the new chairman, barely days before the top election body’s deadline to hold intra-party polls to retain 'bat' as its election symbol.

Gohar, 45, a lawyer, nominated by Khan for the top slot, won the chairman’s position unopposed, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Khan, the 71-year-old cricketer-turned-politician, incarcerated since September in multiple cases and convicted in the Toshakhana corruption case, would not have been able to contest the organisational polls.

Gohar Khan, a member of the PTI chairman's legal team, had announced on November 29 when he was nominated for the post, “Imran Khan was, is and will continue to be the chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf... I will carry out my responsibility till Khan returns.”

The intra-party elections were necessitated on the directives of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that had given a 20-day time frame to the PTI to retain the ‘bat’ as its electoral symbol, ahead of general elections scheduled to be held on February 8.