ECP to resume hearing in PTI foreign funding case

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan on Tuesday will resume hearing in the complaint against secrecy in the PTI foreign funding case, being maintained by the ECP scrutiny committee, on the insistence of PTI.

The complaint was filed by the petitioner of foreign funding case, Akbar S Babar, some weeks back against the scrutiny committee's decision to keep the PTI documents secret which, he believed, would not help in scrutiny of the related documents.

During the last hearing on January 22, the Director General Law, ECP, who heads the scrutiny committee, had remarked that the scrutiny would continue forever, when asked by KP ECP Member Justice (retd) Ms Irshad Qaiser for how soon the exercise could conclude. To this, Irshad Qaiser had ordered the DG Law to submit a written reply and explain in writing why the scrutiny committee had failed to comply with the ECP order of August 27, 2020, whereby it was clearly ordered to complete scrutiny in six weeks. The PTI was also asked to submit its response by March 30 on this count. In the last hearing, the DG Law was also asked to submit a written response to the complaint after his initial reluctance to file any reply.

On his part, petitioner's lawyer Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah had argued that access to the PTI accounts was a right of the petitioner ‘in the light of Article 5(4) of the Political Parties Order, 2002, as well as Section 203(5) of the Election Act, 2017’ besides keeping the PTI accounts secret violates the TOR of the scrutiny that demands scrutiny in the presence of both parties. In a related development, the ECP scrutiny committee has been reconvened to meet at 2:30 pm on March 31 after a break of a few weeks.