A division bench comprising Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Baber Sattar reserved its judgment on the appeal of Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) against the orders to Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for deciding the foreign funding case within one month.

PTI has filed a case challenging the verdict of single member bench.

PTI’s lawyer Anwar Mansoor said that his client party was being targeted despite there was clear instructions of the Supreme Court to the ECP for scrutiny of all political parties without discrimination.

The ECP was not a court of law instead it was an administrative body, he said, adding that all political parties should be on same page.

Justice Athar Minallah remarked it would be good if all political parties come on same page. The court observed that the ECP had told it that the case would be heard in a time frame.
The lawyer said the ECP had started scrutiny of the PTI in March while scrutiny of PPP and PML-N was started in April.

The ECP’s lawyer said that the PTI had submitted complaints against 100 political parties. However, the ECP had served notices to 17 parties after the scrutiny. He said the petitioner had objection over one month time which had already been passed.

Jamat e Islami’s lawyer Qaiser Imam adopted the stance that the ECP had served no any notice to his party during 2014 to 2018. The party had no objection if the ECP wanted to conduct its scrutiny but it shouldn’t be clubbed with the PTI’s foreign funding case.

The court observed that JI used hold political gatherings in simple way but the petitioner party had to spent more expenditure on its processions. The court said currently there was no any decision of ECP before it.The bench subsequently reserved its judgment on the case.