Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja, who was heading a three-member bench, told PTI lawyer Anwar Masood during the hearing today that he was supposed to submit the party's balance sheet, however had failed to do so.
"How much time does your financial expert need to submit the balance sheet?” he asked the lawyer, telling him the delay being created by the PTI was tainting its image internationally.
In response, Masood said that the ECP foreign funding case was affecting the proceedings being carried out at the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for a similar issue, and suggested that the ECP postpone its proceedings until the IHC case had been sorted out.
Raja then reminded Masood that the ICH and ECP operated in their own jurisdictions, at which the lawyer said that he would find out when the arguments would be completed after consultation with the PTI financial expert.
CEC Raja said that this was something that could be found out within five minutes through a simple phone call, and adjourned the meeting until today (Thursday), after informing the PTI counsel that they need to inform ECP how much more time they need to formulate their arguments.
In January 2022, the ECP scrutiny committee submitted a report indicating that the PTI leadership had violated funding laws by collecting millions of dollars in foreign funding without properly detailing its source.