Islamabad - The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf on Tuesday failed to submit a reply to the Election Commission of Pakistan in the foreign funding case.
When a four-member ECP bench took up the case, PTI counsel Saqlain Haider told the bench that the party will submit its response at the next hearing. “We will submit the reply after Islamabad High Court’s hearing scheduled for December 5,” the PTI counsel told the bench.
Akbar S Babar, a founding member of PTI and a petitioner in the case, said that the case had been pending for the past three years and PTI leaders were resorting to delaying tactics to evade the investigation. The ECP adjourned the hearing till December 12 and directed the PTI to ensure the presence of its finance secretary.
In September, the ECP reserved a judgment in the case observing that time was being wasted for four years in the party’s foreign funding case.
During the last hearing, the commission had given the PTI the last chance to submit details about the party’s foreign funding. PTI counsel Haider had told the bench that the foreign funding details would be submitted to the commission in two weeks.
In 2014, Babar filed a petition in the ECP seeking the disqualification of PTI chief Imran Khan for allegedly obtaining funds from illegal sources and discrepancies in the party’s accounts.
He had also claimed that funds worth $3 million were collected by the PTI chief, transferred from illegal channels from the Middle East to bank accounts of PTI members.