ISLAMABAD: A meeting of the Election Commission of Pakistan’s scrutiny committee tasked with conducting fresh audit of accounts of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) ‘as soon as possible’ has been put off indefinitely, according to informed sources.

The committee was scheduled to meet on Wednesday (today), but the meeting was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the sources said. A new date for the meeting would be announced later.

An ECP official said the meeting had been postponed in compliance with a circular issued by the ECP last week to ensure safety of the people in the wake of rising cases of coronavirus across the country.

The committee, headed by ECP’s director general for law, was formed in March 2018 to complete the audit of PTI accounts within a month.

Later, its term was exte­nded. On June 2 this year, the ECP gave a final deadline of Aug 17 to the committee for submission of its report.

Subsequently, the committee concluded the scrutiny on August 13 and submitted a report to the commission, which was rejected for being “neither complete nor well-detailed”.

“The scrutiny committee, on the basis of the docum­ents provided by both parties and collected from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), has neither scrutinised the record nor evaluated the evidence from the documents and it has also failed to form a definite opinion,” the ECP noted in its order passed on Aug 27.

While reprimanding the panel, the ECP observed that it was the duty and responsibility of the committee to scrutinise the authenticity, reliability and credibility of each and every document submitted to it by both parties. It said the committee had the authority to approach proper forums, sources and persons to confirm the authenticity or otherwise of the documents.

“Admittedly, the law provides criteria of authenticity and credibility for scrutiny of the documents, but the committee has not adopted proper procedure in this respect,” the ECP observed.

In its order on the scrutiny committee’s report, the commission noted that no definite conclusion had been drawn in it.

The ECP stated: “It is painful to say that directions were not followed in strict sense despite lapse of more than 28/29 months.”

It ordered the committee to conduct the scrutiny afresh and complete the task as soon as possible but not later than six weeks.

But yet another deadline set by the ECP was missed by the committee and little progress has been made after that.

The last meeting of the committee was held on Oct 21. The committee was scheduled to meet on Nov 26, but the meeting was adjourned due to death of brother of ECP’s director general (law), who heads the panel.

Dec 9 was set as a new date for the meeting, but it has now been put off due to Covid-19 situation.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2020