ISLAMABAD - After months of foot-dragging, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Monday submitted the details of accounts and party funding received from 2010 to 2017 to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

A five-member bench headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice (retd) Sardar Muhammad Raza Khan heard the case after giving the PTI the last chance, at the last hearing, to submit the details. The ECP, meanwhile, adjourned the hearing of the case till October 16.

The PTI submitted financial documents and details of funds received from abroad as well as the party’s accounts of the past seven years in five sealed volumes.

The PTI counsel urged the five-member bench not to share details of party accounts with the petitioner, Akbar S Babar.

Hearing the request, the chief commissioner remarked that according to a Lahore High Court ruling, details of assets should be published online. He directed the PTI counsel to get the financial documents verified through the officials concerned.

When the bench asked the counsel whether the financial records were the same as the party had submitted in the Supreme Court, the counsel, Faisal Chaudhry, said that there were additional documents as well.

Meanwhile, PTI counsel Saqlain Haider earned the ire of the election commissioner when he requested a receipt for the party’s submitted documents.

“Was the responsibility to submit this record ours or yours?” he asked the counsel, saying that the bench members were not “middlemen”. “No receipt will be issued,” CEC Justice (retd) Khan said, prompting the other PTI counsel, Faisal Chaudhry, to apologise to the bench.

Talking to media outside ECP, PTI leader  Babar said that the documents submitted by the party were ‘incomplete and fake’. He said the same documents were produced before the Supreme Court earlier.

While talking about NA-120 by-election results, Babar said that “the nation has rejected the fake slogan of change and voted for the right”.

During the last hearing on September 11, the election body had given the last chance to the PTI to submit the documents. The body had warned that the petition filed against it would be taken as a fact if the party failed to submit the funding details.

Earlier, the PTI was ordered three times by the ECP to submit the funding details but it did not produce them.

In 2014, Babar moved the ECP seeking disqualification of PTI chief Imran Khan for allegedly taking funds from illegal sources and irregularities in the bank accounts of the party.

He had also accused Khan of using illegal channels to transfer $3 million, collected by the PTI chief, from the Middle East to PTI members’ accounts.

In April 2015, after scrutinizing PTI’s annual audit reports, the ECP had ruled that the party had failed to disclose the sources and details of funds received from foreign sources.

Instead of submitting the accounts, the PTI had challenged the ECP’s jurisdiction to scrutinize its accounts.

In July, the Islamabad High Court rejected the PTI’s plea to prevent the ECP from hearing Babar’s petition and referred the case back to the ECP.