ISLAMABAD – The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has accepted opposition’s application regarding hearing of foreign funding case against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on a daily basis.
According to the details, two members of the ECP presided over the hearing and accepted the application as Chief Election Commission (CEC) Sardar Muhammad Raza Khan was not available at the office.
The Opposition parties through their petition have asked the ECP to take up the matter of foreign funding case against PTI on a daily basis from Nov 26 onwards.
In their plea, the opposition parties said that PTI had been pending with the ECP for the past five years, while all relevant documents were available for proceedings.
“We request for daily basis hearing of the case and be decided at the earliest during the term of Chief Election Commissioner,” the opposition parties said in their plea.
Rehbar Committee’s convener Akram Khan Durrani of the JUI-F, PPP-Parliamentarians secretary general Farhatullah Babar, PPP secretary general Nayyar Hussain Bukhari, PML-N secretary general Ahsan Iqbal, Mian Iftikhar Hussain of the Awami National Party, Mohammad Shafiq Pasroori of the Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadith, Usman Kakar of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and Tahir Bizenjo of the National Party signed the application that was addressed to the CEC.
Yesterday, talking to media outside the Election Commission Office, the opposition’s Rehbar Committee demanded ECP to hear the case regarding scrutiny of ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) foreign funds.
Akbar S. Babar, one of the founding members of PTI, had moved the petition before the ECP in 2014 and alleged that around $3 million were collected by the party through its two offshore companies and that money was sent through illegal hundi channels from the Middle East to the accounts of various PTI leaders.
The PTI, he further alleged, concealed foreign accounts and the details of collected funds from the annual audit reports submitted to the ECP.
In October, the ECP rejected four applications moved by PTI seeking secrecy regarding the scrutiny of its foreign funding sources. Last year in March, a scrutiny committee was made to complete an audit of PTI’s funding sources in one month. However, its mandate was later extended for an indefinite period.
