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The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday directed Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan to submit financial details for his London flat by July 25.
The SC bench had taken up the petition seeking disqualification of Khan over non-disclosure of assets, existence of offshore companies by Khan as well as PTI being a foreign-aided party.
When the three-judge SC bench, headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, resumed hearing the case on Thursday, senior lawyer Naeem Bukhari represented Khan in court and told the bench that PTI's legal counsel in the case, Anwar Mansoor, was undergoing treatment for heart ailments in America, citing his absence as the reason for the delay in the submission of documents.
Expressing displeasure over the delay, Chief Justice Nisar said that the court was interested in the documents and not the reason for the delay, and directed the PTI counsel to submit the details to the court by July 25.
Earlier, on Friday, Khan had submitted before the top court a chart of remittances he received from his former wife Jemima Khan also explaining that relevant and available records had already been produced to satisfy the court and to rebut the allegations against him.
In its rejoinder filed through senior counsel Anwar Mansoor, PTI had argued that the disqualification of its party head under Article 62 or 63 of the Constitution was not the domain of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) under the Political Parties Order (PPO), 2002.
At the same time, to determine whether a political party received foreign funding does not fall under the domain of the ECP and thus the commission had no jurisdiction to audit the accounts of the political parties and enter into fishing or roving inquiry.
It also denied that the party received foreign aid or prohibited funds, adding that the consequence of any political party receiving funds from prohibited source had already been provided for under Article 6(4) of the PPO whereas the consequence of foreign-aided party was provided differently under Article 15 of the PPO.
