Daily Times

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Monday suspended its order to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to conclude the PTI foreign funding case within 30 days.

A single bench, headed by Justice Mohsin Kayani, had directed the ECP to wrap up the case in a month over applications filed by the PTI asking for Akbar S Babar’s separation from the case, dismissal of the case, and keeping the PTI documents secret.

On Monday, a division bench, comprising Chief Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Babar Sattar, took up the PTI’s intra-court appeal challenging the single bench’s order.

The bench combined the PTI petition against ECP’s alleged bias with the intra-court appeal and issued notices to the parties, seeking replies on May 17. “Moreover, we expect that the Election Commission of Pakistan will ensure that an uneven playing field is not created by treating the political parties differently. We expect the Election Commission of Pakistan to proceed with the scrutiny process by treating all the political parties equally and in accordance with law,” the order read.

The PTI has sought a judicial order for the ECP to conclude similar cases against PML-N, PPP and other political parties in the same period of time, maintaining that the commission targeted only PTI.

It also demanded the court direct the ECP to scrutinize other political parties’ accounts through the State Bank of Pakistan and publicize the account details after the scrutiny report.

The PTI has nominated ECP and 17 political parties, including PML-N, PPP, MQM-P, JUI-F, AML, TLP, BAP, BNP and ANP as respondents in the case.

On April 14, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani of IHC had ordered conclusion of foreign funding case of the PTI within 30 days, ruling that the ECP’s role “is of important nature and same cannot be curtailed in any manner”. It noted that the ECP was a “supervisory, regulatory and administrative body under the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 to deal with the affairs of political parties, election and its results”.

It also noted that “no restriction could be imposed upon ECP to adopt any process of inquiry, investigation, scrutiny to reach out the mandate of assigned duty in terms of Article 17(3)”. The ruling PTI hid funds worth millions of rupees from the ECP, the report of an ECP scrutiny committee probing the party’s funds had revealed on January 4.

The report stated that the PTI provided “false information” regarding the party’s funding to the ECP. It said that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP’s) bank statement revealed that the party had received Rs1.64 billion in funding. According to the report, the party did not disclose funding worth more than Rs310 million to the ECP.

The scrutiny committee was formed in 2019 to audit foreign funding received by the PTI. The case began in 2014 when the party’s founding member, Akbar S Babar, filed it.

The PTI expressed reservations about Justice Kayani’s remarks that “if any of the party funding had been received through prohibited sources, it will affect the status of such political party, including its chairman. Therefore, it is necessary to dig out the truth”.

According to the appeal, these observations were not warranted as the “judge was not mandated to use such harsh language to the utter disadvantage of the appellant”.

During the hearing on Monday, PTI counsel Shah Khawar argued that Justice Kiyani had used a harsh language and phrases such as “face the music” in his order. He said a single-judge bench didn’t have the power to pass such an order. “Technically, this case doesn’t even fall under foreign funding. It falls under prohibited funding,” he contended.

Subsequently, IHC CJ Minallah observed that ECP was a “constitutional institution” and suspended the court’s previous order. He said the ECP was responsible for scrutinizing the accounts of all political parties every year.

“As per the law, if prohibited funding is found, it should be seized. But when the scrutiny is complete and the report has been submitted, why is the ECP still hearing the case?” he remarked.