The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is expected to announce its verdict in the much-delayed prohibited funding case – previously referred to as the foreign funding case – against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) today (Tuesday) at 10 am.
The case, which was filed by party founding member Akbar S Babar, has been pending since November 14, 2014. Babar, who is no longer associated with the PTI, had alleged serious financial irregularities in the party’s funding from Pakistan and abroad.
The PTI has denied any wrongdoing and maintains the funding is not from prohibited sources. Last month, the ECP reserved its verdict in the case.
According to the ECP website, a three-member bench headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja and comprising Nisar Ahmed Durrani and Shah Muhammad Jatoi is scheduled to announce the verdict today.
On January 4, the ECP’s scrutiny committee, formed in March 2018 to examine the PTI’s foreign funding in a month, finally submitted its report after 95 hearings and nearly four years.
According to the report, the party under-reported an amount of Rs312 million over a four-year period, between FY2009-10 and FY2012-13. Year-wise details show that an amount of over Rs145m was under-reported in FY2012-13 alone.
The development comes days after a delegation of the ruling alliance, comprising members of the Pakistan Democratic Movement, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), met ECP officials and urged them to release the verdict in the case.
Talking to the media outside the commission, PML-N leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had said, “Justice merits immediate action, according to the law and due process, whenever there’s an issue.”
“We said that the election law in the country states that any party taking funding from a foreigner has to declare who gave it the money, when and how much. And no party has the authority to take funding from a foreign company.”
The former minister had also said that Babar had presented “clear evidence” in the case eight years ago when it had first surfaced.
Since then, the PTI tried to hamper the case, by all means, he had alleged, and accused the party of exerting “government pressure” on the ECP during its tenure, as well as “political pressure” following its ouster.
Meanwhile, PTI chief Imran Khan has been persistent over his demand for CEC Raja’s resignation, accusing him of being biased towards the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
He has alleged that CEC was “incompetent” and “dishonest”. “We don’t trust the ECP head and he has been imposed on us,” Imran said.
Last week, the PTI also decided to move a reference against Raja in the judicial commission. The party also got resolutions against the CEC passed by Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies, where it has the majority.
In another development, the registrar’s office of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday raised an objection to the PTI’s petition challenging the acceptance of resignations of its 11 members of the National Assembly (MNAs) by the NA speaker.
The petition was filed by PTI General Secretary Asad Umar, which stated that 131 MNAs of his party had tendered resignation after the no-confidence voting. He said the parliamentary committee of his party had decided to resign from the NA collectively as it wanted to get a fresh mandate, but the resignations were being accepted on the basis of pick and choose.
The petitioner was of the view that the NA speaker had no authority to keep the matter of resignations pending.
The petition prayed the court to instruct the ECP to de-notify all MNAs of the PTI and declare the seats vacant.
The petition also prayed the court to declare all the resignations accepted. However, the registrar’s office raised an objection and asked the petitioner to rectify it.
