ISLAMABAD: Aamir Mughal brandished an eggplant before a gaggle of voters, rallying support behind the Pakistani staple during an election campaign, he says is being undermined by bizarre symbols assigned to candidates.

"The eggplant is now a famous symbol across all Pakistan," declares the candidate for the capital Islamabad, a follower of jailed ex-prime minister Imran Khan.

"Now this has become the king of the vegetables."

In Pakistan — where literacy rates hover at just 60 percent — political parties use icons to identify their candidates on the campaign trail and ballot papers.

As a military-backed crackdown puts the squeeze on opposition parties, some candidates say authorities are trying to hinder their campaigns by allotting them symbols that are either degrading or downright weird.

Khan has been barred from standing in Thursday's poll, and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has been stripped of their long-time cricket bat emblem over failing to meet election commission rules.

Dozens of his followers are also not allowed to stand, and some of those on the ticket — now running as independents — have reported harassment or been forced into hiding.

Others have been assigned a random bric-a-brac of symbols and are scrambling to make an impression on the campaign trail.

A spokesman for the Election Commission of Pakistan said the symbols are chosen from a list designed for independents and "are purely the prerogative of the returning officers."

The humble eggplant — or "baingan" in Pakistan's Urdu language — is a key ingredient in Pakistani cuisine. It is also ripe with symbolic connotations, notably deployed as an emoji suggestive of male anatomy.

"The election commission assigned us this symbol to make a mockery of us," said 46-year-old Mughal. But Mughal's team has leaned into their fate.

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