ISLAMABAD: A three-member Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) bench adjourned hearing on Wednesday till May 28 on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s objections to the TORs of the scrutiny committee, formed to review the party’s foreign funding after it again changed its lawyer citing ill-health of the previous one.
The party will now be represented by former law minister Babar Awan, a senior PPP leader who represented Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari in several corruption cases filed against them. He replaced former Attorney General of Pakistan Anwar Mansoor Khan.
Akbar S Babar, the petitioner and founding member of the party, continued to be represented by Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah, who has been his counsel ever since the case was first filed in November 2014. With the case now enters its fourth year with no apparent end in sight, the PTI continues to delay proceedings on one pretext after another.
Upon exhausting all legal objections to the jurisdiction of the ECP and the locus standi of the petitioner in the Islamabad High Court and the Supreme Court, the latest application to stall scrutiny of its accounts relates to the party’s objections on the TORs of the three-member committee formed by the commission.
The committee, formed on April 3 and headed by Law director general and two auditors from the defence establishment, was mandated by the ECP to scrutinise PTI’s accounts in one month. However, it failed to make significant headway as the party failed to produce financial statements sought from it and instead objected to its terms of references (TORs) and media reporting of the scrutiny proceedings.
On the request of the PTI lawyer, the case was adjourned till May 28.
