ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC), Thursday, issued notice to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) over the maintainability of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s petition challenging its fact-finding report in the prohibited funding case against the party.
A three-member bench, headed by Acting Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and comprising Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb and Justice Babar Sattar heard the petition of the PTI Additional Secretary General, Omar Ayub, praying before the court to declare the ECP’s decision dated August 2 as illegal.
During the hearing, the PTI lawyer alleged that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was harassing the party leaders in the wake of the ECP report and said that he could have taken his case to the election watchdog once again but the observations made by the ECP were beyond its mandate. He further argued that since the ECP was not a tribunal, it could not give declarations against PTI Chairman Imran Khan.
However, Justice Aamer said that the court could not bar the FIA from acting against the PTI on the basis of facts even if the ECP report challenged by the PTI in the case is set aside. He said that the FIA would only determine if any criminality was involved in this case.
Anwar Mansoor told the bench about the case saying that the funding case was taken to the ECP by a former PTI leader and the matter also came under consideration in the Supreme Court (SC) in 2017 during the hearing of the Hanif Abbasi case. He further said that in 2018, the ECP started scrutiny when the SC said that all political parties should be scrutinised by the election watchdog. But, he claimed that only the PTI was being targeted.
The counsel also read out the SC ruling, wherein, the ECP was asked to “act without discrimination”. He said that he had placed the “entire record” before the ECP to show that nothing was concealed from the ECP.
Mansoor added that in 2018, the scrutiny of the accounts of all the parties started, but the ECP only took action against the PTI and applied the Political Parties Ordinance (PPO) Act, 2002, but the scrutiny committee relied on a different law for its report.
He informed that $13,000 came from the joint account of one, Nassar, who married to an Indian girl Ramita Shetty, but the commission itself assumed that half of the money was from Ramita Shetty and the other half from her husband.
The lawyer also alleged that the PTI’s agents were dubbed as foreign companies in the ECP report. He further said that the law did not say that funds were only to be taken from individuals and not organisations.
The court observed that the law does mention that funds were to be taken from individuals only. It added that do you seek removal of the observation of the Election Commission? This is only a report, not an action of the ECP, the court said. It added that so far only a show cause notice had been issued.
The PTI lawyer responded that this was an action against the Imran-led party as the ECP declared it a matter of Article 17 while the federal government and the FIA are taking action against the party on the basis of this report. He maintained that they wanted that any observation made by the ECP beyond its mandate, needs to be suspended.
Justice Babar asked him to share his reservations regarding the investigation against the PTI and remarked that it is not the 1970s that a party could be dissolved in a bout of madness.
Later, the bench issued pre-admission notices and deferred the hearing till August 24 for further proceedings in this matter.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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