ECP serves show-cause on 42 political parties

They failed to file their account details, a legal requirement

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) served notices on Thursday upon heads of 42 political parties who failed to file their account details, an annual legal requirement.

Among these parties are some mainstream groups such as Mehmood Khan Achakzai’s Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), Ijaz ul Haq’s Pakistan Muslim League-Ziaul Haq group, Pir Pagara’s Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F).

After new election laws were enacted last year, 122 political parties qualified for enlisting with the ECP.



According to the law, all political parties must submit statements of their accounts and assets within two months after the start of new financial year, which expired on August 31.

Almost a month after the expiry of this timeframe, 42 political parties are yet to file their annual statements.

The ECP issued a list of these political parties and shared with the media its show-cause notice it sent to these political parties.

Parties failing to submit their account statements and asset details would not be allowed to take part in any election during the year, it warned.

Although the Elections Act of 2017 changed formalities for enlisting political parties with the ECP, it still did not come up with a tangible criterion for discouraging non-serious political entities.

Before the Election Act, 2017, was enacted last year, more than 350 political parties were enlisted with the ECP, most of them one-man show.



After the imposition of new election laws, all political parties were asked to submit a deposit of Rs100,000 and a 2,000-member list along with photocopies of their national identity cards. This effectively helped bring down the number of registered political entities, but 122 political parties were still registered with the ECP.

Interestingly, there is no mechanism to strike out any political party once it gets enlisted. The ECP can, at most, disallow a political party from issuing electoral tickets to their candidates during any election year if it failed to submit annual statements of assets and accounts.