PTI protests ECP order rejecting its appeals against scrutiny

ISLAMABAD: The foreign funding case petitioner, Akbar S Babar, through his counsel, has moved the Election Commission of Pakistan for starting contempt proceedings against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leadership for walking out and boycotting its scrutiny committee meeting Wednesday.

The PTI team of lawyers and financial representatives had protested the detailed ECP order of October 10, 2019 whereby, it had rejected all four PTI applications seeking secrecy of scrutiny and barring the petitioner of the foreign funding case to participate in the scrutiny committee meetings.

The order termed the foreign funding case as ‘the worst historical example of abuse of the process of law’ and accused PTI of delaying the scrutiny process ‘one way or the other’.

In the hand written application filed, the petitioner’s counsel Badar Iqbal Chaudhery narrated the entire episode of PTI walkout and claims that before boycotting the proceedings, the PTI legal team consulted his clients for almost 45 minutes and announced that they had been ‘specifically instructed to boycott’ the scrutiny proceedings.

The application requests the ECP to take cognizance of the PTI conduct and accordingly initiate contempt proceedings against the leadership and pass appropriate orders in the light of earlier findings on the subject when PTI Chairman Imran Khan had submitted an apology for earlier contempt of the ECP.

The application also requests the ECP to direct the Scrutiny Committee to compile its report as both parties claim to have submitted all the relevant documents.