PTI moves IHC against ECP decision to scrutinise accounts

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) is taking up today (Tuesday) a petition filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) by which it has challenged the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to get the party’s funds scrutinised by its committee.

The ECP Scrutiny Committee has yet to finalise scrutiny of the PTI bank statements and submit its findings before the commission in a foreign funding case. The committee was formed on March 27 to look into PTI’s foreign funding accounts and submit its findings in one month.

The committee held its first meeting on April 3. However, due to lack of cooperation by the PTI in submitting its accounts and bank statements, the deadline for the committee to conclude its report was extended by another two months, on July 3.



Despite the extension, the PTI continued to delay submission of its accounts, including the bank statements sought by the committee for the period from 2009 to 2013. Between April and end of June this year, the committee met on 19 occasions, but with little progress.

Finally, the ECP decided to request the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to present the same under powers vested in it under the Constitution. Accordingly, the SBP directed all scheduled banks of Pakistan to submit the PTI accounts to the ECP by July 16.

Sources in the ECP have confirmed that PTI’s all bank statements for the period between 2009 and 2013 are with the ECP. However, the ECP Scrutiny Committee headed by the DG Law and two auditors from the defence establishment have yet to scrutinise and finalise the findings for unknown reasons.

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.

However, contrary to its stated public position of not challenging the ECP’s right to scrutinise its accounts, the PTI has once again 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.

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.