Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan on Thursday moved a petition in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) seeking directives declaring as null and void the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) March 12 decision following which a committee was formed to scrutinise details of his party’s sources of funding.
He also filed an application in the ECP seeking secrecy of documents obtained during the scrutiny of funds, after which the commission issued notices for a May 28 hearing on the application.
The ECP had issued the veridct in a petition submitted by Akbar S. Babar, dissident founder member of the PTI.
The petitioner had alleged that nearly $3 million in illegal foreign funds were collected by the PTI through two offshore companies, registered under Imran Khan’s name, and that the money was sent through illegal ‘hundi’ channels from the Middle East to accounts of PTI employees.
The petition also alleged that the foreign accounts used to collect funds were concealed from the annual audit reports submitted to the ECP. A three-member committee was sought in the March 12 verdict of the ECP to scrutinise all documents and evidence in the presence of the petitioner, the respondents and their lawyers. The scrutiny committee, headed by the Director General Law of ECP and comprising two auditors from the defence establishment, was formed on April 3.
However, the committee could not make any significant progress during the month as the PTI failed to submit financial documents, particularly bank statements of its accounts, sought by the committee. Meanwhile, the PTI objected to the terms of reference (ToRs) of the committee and an alleged breach of secrecy, with reports gathered in the scrutiny process leaked to the media.
In the petition submitted in the IHC on Thursday, Khan claimed that the ECP’s March 12 order ‘suffered from material irregularities’ and it was an ‘outcome of the ignorance of the law on the subject’.
The petition also claimed that the ‘impugned order is based on malafide intentions and is not passed in a transparent manner’. It said that although the IHC had ordered the ECP to keep account details to itself, the committee formed by the ECP ‘didn’t bother [with] the orders passed by the IHC and shared all confidential documents with Respondent No. 2 (Babar). It is further noteworthy that Respondent No. 2 (Babar) made public all the proceedings of the committee via his social media accounts’.
The petition also claimed that Babar had participated in the proceedings of the committee ‘which is a sheer violation of the SC guidelines’, and alleged that he is not free from malice or ill will, and just aimed to harass the petitioner (Imran Khan)’ after his expulsion from the party.
The petition quoted an SC judgement on a previous case ‘Hanif Abbasi vs Imran Khan and others’, which stated that it was the duty of the SC to scrutinise accounts of political parties on the touchstone of Article 63 of the PPO, read in the light of article 17(3) of the Constitution. “The ECP must act transparently, fairly and justly, without discrimination among different political parties seeking election symbols to contest the election to the constitutional legislatures of Pakistan. For undertaking such scrutiny, it shall be reasonable for the ECP to examine the accounts of political parties within five years of the objected accounts of that party having been published in official gazette,” it said, while also noting that two members of the first committee had distanced themselves from it due to personal reasons, after which it was dissolved. A second committee was formed, the ToRs of which were in violation of the observations of the SC, as well as the IHC order, it noted.
“This power of assessing and deciding whether a political party has received contributions or donations from any sources prohibited… can be exercised by the ECP on its own motion based upon the facts available in the public domain or revealed by information provided to it, subject to the condition that the information emanates from a credible source, that it is reliable and verifiable and is not a mala fide fabrication meant to harass and prejudice a political party, its leaders or its members,” the petition said.
Published in Daily Times, May 18th 2018.
