The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday challenged the recent Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP)’s verdict on the prohibited funding case at the Islamabad High Court (IHC).
PTI additional secretary general Omar Ayub filed the petition through former attorney general Anwar Mansoor Khan, lawyer Shah Khawar and Faisal Fareed. The petitioner requested the court to declare the verdict illegal and set aside the show-cause notice sent to the party for not declaring 13 ‘unknown’ accounts that were found linked to it.
A three-member bench of the ECP headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja had unanimously found earlier that the PTI received prohibited funds from 34 foreign nationals and 351 companies based outside the country. The commission also declared that 13 ‘unknown’ accounts had been found linked to the party and the submissions by PTI chairperson Imran Khan were ‘inaccurate and wrong’. The party was issued a show-cause notice after the unanimous verdict.
Following the verdict, PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif urged the government to take legal action against the PTI chief. “Today, the ECP’s verdict has shown that it is actually him [Imran] who is the biggest thief in history. He knew that he had committed the biggest money laundering. This is the reason he kept demanding the chief election commissioner’s resignation,” the former prime minister told journalists in London.
