The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday suspended the order to wrap up the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf foreign funding case within the next 30 days.
A single bench had ordered the Election Commission of Pakistan to conclude the case within a month, after applications were filed by PTI requesting for Akbar S. Babar’s separation from the case, dismissal of the case, and keeping the party documents a secret.
Today’s order was issued by IHC’s division bench, consisting of IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Babar Sattar. The bench was hearing PTI’s intra-court appeal challenging the single bench’s order.
The bench combined the PTI petition against the election commission’s purported bias with the intra-court appeal and served notices to the parties, pursuing replies on May 17.
The PTI has also been pursuing a judicial order for the ECP to decide similar cases against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan People’s Party and other political parties during the same period of time. The party maintained that the commission had targeted only PTI.
It also demanded the court order the election commission to analyze accounts of other political parties via the State Bank of Pakistan and make public the account details after the scrutiny report.
