ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Saturday permitted estranged PTI leader Akbar S. Babar to join proceedings on the party’s petition against the findings of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on prohibited funding.

A larger bench of the IHC accepted the application of Mr Babar to be made party in the PTI’s writ petition challenging the ECP order of August 2, 2022, on prohibited funding.

The short order issued by the larger bench, comprising Justice Aamer Farooq, Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb and Justice Babar Sattar, stated that “the referred facts make the applicant (Akbar S Babar) a proper party to the present case as he has participated in the proceedings all along and he has been impleaded in various rounds of the litigation, and there is no justification or basis to exclude him at this stage.”

Mr Babar took the foreign funding case to the ECP on November 14, 2014, after he developed differences with the PTI chief over alleged internal corruption and abuse of laws governing political funding.

The petitioner had alleged that nearly $3 million in illegal foreign funds were collected through two offshore companies, registered under party chief Imran Khan’s signature, and that the money was sent through illegal ‘hundi’ channels from the Middle East to the accounts of PTI employees.

He had also alleged that the foreign accounts used to collect funds were concealed from the annual audit reports submitted to the electoral watchdog.

In August this year, the ECP had concluded that the PTI did indeed receive illegal funding and issued a notice to the party asking why the funds should not be confiscated.

During the last hearing on Mr Babar’s plea on Sept 28, the bench had reserved the verdict.

Previously, PTI’s counsel Anwar Mansoor Khan had informed the bench that the funding case was taken to the ECP by a former PTI leader and the matter also came under consideration in the Supreme Court in 2017.

He said in 2018 the ECP started scrutiny when the SC said all political parties should be scrutinised by the election watchdog. But he claimed that only the PTI was being targeted.

The PTI has requested the court to set aside the ECP’s report on its funding.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2022