ISLAMABAD: Head of the Scrutiny Committee of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has defended the decision to keep the PTI’s financial documents secret, saying the petitioner has to prove his case on the strength of his evidence.

In a report submitted to the commission, he referred to an ECP order rejecting the PTI’s plea for secrecy in the foreign funding case.

In the same report, he conceded the committee had refused to provide an opportunity to the petitioner to go through the PTI’s bank statements.

A three-member bench of the ECP on Tuesday heard the complaint of the petitioner in the PTI foreign funding case, Akbar S. Babar, against the Scrutiny Committee’s order of Feb 9 to keep PTI financial documents secret.

The Scrutiny Committee claims that the documents cannot be shared with the petitioner as the respondent (PTI) objects to it.

On the last hearing, the ECP had ordered the head of the Scrutiny Committee to submit a report on why ECP’s order of Aug 27, 2020 was not complied with to submit the scrutiny report in six weeks.

On the cause list of the day, the complaint regarding secrecy of PTI foreign funding scrutiny was put at No. 1 on the agenda. However, hearing of the complaint was delayed as the head of the ECP Scrutiny Committee, Mohammad Arshad, who is also director general law of the ECP, did not show up. Finally, the three-member bench decided to hear other complaints and delayed hearing on secrecy of PTI foreign funding to the last.

Instead of appearing in person, Mr Arshad submitted an eight-page report, a copy of which is available with Dawn.

The report acknowledges that the Scrutiny Committee turned down the request of the complainant to even peruse the PTI bank statements.

Interestingly, Mr Arshad in his report does not refer to any law or rule that bars the complainant from access to the PTI accounts.

He however says it is up to the Commission to decide whether copies of the documents submitted by the PTI should be provided to the petitioner

Justifying the inordinate delay in concluding the scrutiny, he refers to other official responsibilities of the committee members as an impediment to the scrutiny process.

The report says: “The Committee is not dedicated. One of the members is in active service as Deputy Auditor General. The Chairman (of the Committee) looks after important court cases.”

Proceedings before the committee commenced on April 4, 2018. The complainant and his counsel insisted on each and every date that each document submitted by the respondent should be scrutinised in their presence and

each entry may be shared with them. The committee did allow perusal of the documents to the complainant. The scrutiny process has become slow and some time it takes two to three hours to go through few pages.

The petitioner’s lawyer Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah said they could not be part of “rubberstamping fake and forged documents”. He said without access to PTI documents, the petitioner was being asked to participate in a scrutiny process blindfolded, which was unacceptable.

The PTI’s lawyer Syed Khawar Shah opposed handing over of PTI accounts to the petitioner. When he was repeatedly asked by the bench for the reason to do so, he sought more time.

Talking to reporters outside the ECP, Mr Babar said keeping the scrutiny process secret only raised concern on the transparency of the scrutiny process. He said it was unfortunate that even after six years of filing the case, rightful access to the PTI accounts was being denied to him.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2021