ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif on Tuesday appealed to the Election Commission of Pakistan to announce a “long-delayed” decision on the PTI foreign funding case amid repeated allegations by Imran Khan against the Chief Election Commissioner.
The Prime Minister on Twitter today urged the Election Commission to give a verdict in the matter, which was reserved on June 21 after a year-long hearing.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif tweeted in response to PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s attacks on CEC Sikandar Sultan Raja, “I urge the Election Commission of Pakistan to announce the long-delayed decision on the PTI foreign funding case.”
The Prime Minister said that Imran Niazi has been given a free pass for a long time despite repeated and brazen attacks on government institutions.
“The country has been hurt by the punishment given to them.”
The prime minister demanded an early announcement of the decision, a day after Imran Khan called for the resignation of the CEC despite a landslide victory in the Punjab bypolls, where no allegations of rigging were made by his party.
Delivering a video-link speech after the core committee meeting in Islamabad on Monday, Imran said, “We have no faith in this Chief Election Commissioner, he should resign. He got the Senate elections conducted, the Supreme Court gave him the Senate The Election Commission and all political parties know that money runs in secret Senate elections but this Election Commissioner did not comply.”
He continued that unprecedented amounts were used in the last Senate elections. While Yusuf Raza Gilani’s son was caught giving bribes, the same Election Commissioner investigated it and it has been a year until no action has been taken. .
“The biggest regret I have in Punjab by-elections is on the Chief Election Commissioner because he has been dishonest, has no merit, it was found that there was a typing mistake and 40 lakh people were shown dead. If there was anywhere else in the world he would have resigned. We had eight cases with which we went to the Election Commission and it dismissed them, while the courts ruled against it, which means the ECP deliberately passed judgments against us,” he had claimed.
prohibited money case
The restricted funding case was filed in November 2014 by Akbar S Babar, a founding member of PTI, who alleged serious financial irregularities in the party’s funding from Pakistan and abroad.
The party, however, has denied any wrongdoing, saying the funds are not from prohibited sources.
A report by the ECP inquiry committee probing the party’s funds revealed on January 4 that PTI hid funds worth lakhs of rupees from the commission.
The report said PTI provided “wrong information” about the party’s funding to the ECP. It said that bank statements of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) showed that the party had received Rs 1.64 billion in funding.
According to the report, the party did not disclose the funding of more than Rs 310 million to the ECP. The scrutiny committee was set up in 2019 to audit foreign funding received by PTI.