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ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) will hear today (Tuesday) a petition challenging its scrutiny committee’s decision to keep PTI’s financial documents secret.
The complaint was filed by the petitioner of foreign funding case, Akbar S Babar, some weeks back against the scrutiny committee’s decision to keep the PTI documents secret which, he believed, would not help in scrutiny of the related documents.
At the last hearing on March 22, ECP’s Director General Law, who heads the scrutiny committee, had remarked that the scrutiny would continue forever, when asked by KP ECP Member Justice (retd) Ms Irshad Qaiser for how soon the exercise could conclude.
To this, Irshad Qaiser had ordered the DG Law to submit a written reply and explain in writing why the scrutiny committee had failed to comply with the ECP order of August 27, 2020, whereby it was clearly ordered to complete scrutiny in six weeks.
The petitioner’s lawyer, Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah, had argued that access to PTI accounts was a right of his client “in the light of Article 5(4) of the Political Parties Order, 2002, as well as Section 203(5) of the Elections Act, 2017”.
In a related development, the ECP scrutiny committee tasked with scrutinising the PTI’s accounts, has been reconvened to meet at 2.30pm on March 31 after a break of weeks.
