Foreign funding case: ECP adjourns hearing again after PTI submits another application

ISLAMABAD: One of the longest cases in the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) faced yet another hiccup, as the ECP scrutiny of PTI foreign funding Tuesday was again derailed after PTI filed yet another application against the petitioner and PTI founding member Akbar S Babar for talking to the media on the scrutiny process.

To this effect, the PTI lawyer Shah Khawar read out the contents of the application before the ECP committee. While in the application, PTI alleged that Babar had passed disparaging remarks about the working of the Scrutiny Committee before the media by allegedly stating that he did not expect justice from the committee. The petitioners’ lawyer Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah took strong exception to yet another application filed by PTI to delay the proceedings of the Committee, saying already, four similar applications were rejected by the ECP in its judgment of October 10, 2019 terming PTI tactics as ‘historical abuse of law’ to delay the case.

The lawyer then read out excerpts of the committee record whereby PTI had accused the committee of bias and collusion with the petitioner and yet no action was initiated by the committee nor taken note of it.

Similarly, Ahmad Shah read a detailed retort by the PTI Central Finance Secretary Sardar Azhar Tariq to a news story in which he had alleged that ‘It is the Election Commission’ which has an apparent bias and is discriminating against the PTI by not calling for accounts despite the categorical directions of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Despite all odds PTI has cooperated and contested the proceedings and placed all the true and correct facts and documents before the scrutiny committee, and will continue to do so notwithstanding the unlawful manner the exercise of scrutiny is being conducted in concert with the opponents’.