Islamabad - Fate of audit report of three-member scrutiny committee of Election Commission of Pakistan on bank statements of ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s foreign funding hangs in the balance even after more than seven months.
The three-member committee headed by ECP Director General Law M Arshad constituted on March 27 this year was mandated to complete scrutiny of the PTI’s foreign funding in one month.
The Committee which held its first meeting on April 3 could not proceed because of lack of cooperation from the PTI leadership in submitting details of the required accounts and banks statements.
The mandate of the ECP’s scrutiny committee was extended with the committee making no significant progress on the assigned task and despite having 19 meetings during this period.
Consequently the ECP exercising its powers under Article 220 of the Constitution requested the State Bank of Pakistan to produce the same and the SBP while complying with the ECP request directed all the scheduled banks of Pakistan should submit required information by July 16.
The Election Commission has received PTI’s all bank statements for the period between 2009 and 2013 and the Scrutiny Committee is awaiting decision of the Division Bench of the Islamabad High Court.
The PTI has challenged the verdict of the IHC’s single bench by filing a fifth writ petition this time before a division bench of the IHC which is scheduled for hearing on September 18, 2018.
Since November 2014 when the foreign funding case was first filed, the PTI has repeatedly challenged jurisdiction of the ECP as well as the PTI membership of the petitioner, Akbar S Babar.
The ECP and later the Islamabad High Court (IHC) passed more than one judgment validating the ECP jurisdiction and the PTI membership of the petitioner.
The last PTI writ petition in the IHC challenging the formation of the ECP Scrutiny Committee to audit the PTI foreign funding and Babar’s membership was dismissed by a single IHC bench on July 24.
All previous PTI attempts challenging the ECP jurisdiction and the PTI membership of the petitioner have failed and the ECP verdict of May 8, 2017 and the IHC verdict of July 24, 2018 have been in favour of Babar, a founding member of the party.
The foreign funding case was first filed in Nov 2014 by Babar in the wake of his differences with party chairman Imran Khan over alleged corruption and other illegalities in the PTI funding.