KARACHI, July 22: The government’s new condition making it mandatory for all political parties to submit their audit reports before the October general elections has left a majority of them in a fix as they are reluctant to get their accounts audited.

Although almost all political and religious parties claim to have their accounts audited on a regular basis, but actually they have failed to do so.

According to the 1962 Political Parties Act, all political parties are required to get their accounts audited regularly by the end of each fiscal year. But due to slackness on part of the successive governments and the parties, nothing has been done in this regard.

Recently the Election Commission of Pakistan has made it a condition for all political parties to audit their accounts in order to participate in the forthcoming elections.

When asked to comment on the issue, a spokesman for the PML (QA) told this news agency that “we are regularly getting our accounts audited so this condition does not apply on us.”

A spokesman for the PML (N), Yasin Shaikh, said: “As far as the condition is concerned, we are updated and do not need to apply it as auditing of accounts is our regular feature.”

The PML constitution bounds each party worker to deposit a minimum amount of Rs50 in the accounts of the party.

The PPP’s information secretary, Taj Haider, expressed the view that his party has not only been getting its accounts audited at central level, but at provincial level too. He said the exercise has been followed since 1962 when the Political Parties Act was introduced.

Every member of the PPP central coordination committee has to pay a minimum amount of Rs18,000 annually, while members of provincial and city coordination committees pay Rs12,000 annually as party funds, he maintained.

There are other sources of income, including contributions from PPP workers, which are not fixed and these payments are not included in the amounts which are to be audited.

A Jamaat-i-Islami spokesman, Sarfraz Ahmed, showed this scribe documentary proves to support his words that party accounts had been audited by an international firm since 1948. Every JI worker is at liberty to provide financial support to the party every month in accordance with his income, he said.

According to a Muttahida Qaumi Movement spokesman, his party has ensured audit of its accounts regularly since its formation. He said the exercise has excluded his party from the new condition.

A central leader of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F), Qari Shair Afzal, said: “intra-party elections process has already been initiated at different levels, while the condition of accounts’ auditing does not apply on us.”

He said his party has a well-engineered system to keep checks and balance on its resources and auditing of accounts was a regular feature.

He asked the leadership of ARD and the MMA to fulfil all requirements of the Election Commission to foil the conspiracies of the regime.—PPI