ISLAMABAD: A five-member bench of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sardar Raza Mohammad Khan, heard on Tuesday the foreign funding case against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on a petition filed by disgruntled party founder Akbar S Babar.
In 2014, Akbar S Babar, a founding PTI member had filed a petition in the ECP seeking the disqualification of Imran Khan for allegedly obtaining funds from illegal sources and discrepancies in the party’s accounts.
He 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.
During December 12 hearing of the case, the CEC had summoned for the second time PTI Finance Secretary Azhar Tariq Khan, after the party had failed to submit its reply to Babar’s objections raised against PTI documents submitted in ECP and Supreme Court.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Azhar Tariq Khan rubbished Babar’s objections, saying that “the petitioner is not even aware of the contents of the documents submitted to the ECP, which are not public”.
Meanwhile, the petitioner requested the commission again to grant him permission to submit additional documents regarding the funding. The ECP denied the request, and said Akbar should have provided all documents as part of his first request.
The ECP then adjourned the hearing until February 7.
On the other hand, the ECP on Tuesday asked PTI to submit all details of intra-party elections with the commission by January 24.
A five-member commission headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza, while hearing the PTI intra-party election case, said that the reply submitted by PTI with ECP was incomplete.
The CEC said that PTI did not provide all details which the ECP had sought from them. He said that the PTI also failed to provide details of the votes which were cast in favour of contesting panels to the commission.
He said that all details which were required from PTI in accordance with the order of December 13, 2017, were not provided to the commission. The commission fixed the next date of the hearing on January 24.