The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has suspended its order asking the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to conclude the foreign funding case against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) within a month, Aaj News reported on Monday.

IHC’s division bench, comprising IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Babar Sattar, heard PTI’s intra-court appeal challenging the single bench’s order.

The court earlier this month had dismissed PTI’s petition seeking to keep the document of its foreign funding secret and to disassociate petitioner Akbar Babar from the case

Last week, PTI’s Asad Umar filed an intra-court appeal against an earlier decision of the IHC single bench, wherein Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani had issued a verdict upholding the ECP’s decision to give access to the case’s record to Babar and not to remove him from proceedings.

“The claim submitted by the petitioner (PTI) is not maintainable as the petitioner itself is not able to demonstrate any of his legitimate rights when [it] itself is in agreement that respondent No 2 (Babar) can participate in the proceedings to the extent of information which he has provided to the scrutiny committee or the ECP, therefore, this petition is not based upon bona fide, rather filed with specific motive, just to stop respondent No 2 Akbar Sher Babar to participate in the proceedings, which has already been settled by this court in the previous proceedings,” Kayani’s order had said.

During today’s hearing, the PTI’s counsel objected to the single bench’s use of the word ‘foreign funding’ in the decision, pointing out that that “the case before the ECP is not of foreign funding but prohibited funding”.

He further stated that it was not the prerogative of the bench to order the electoral watchdog to take a decision within 30 days.

CJ Minallah responded to the petitioner that the law permitted the ECP to scrutinize the accounts of political parties every year and if prohibited funding was found, it would be confiscated.

The chief justice inquired that if the ECP scrutiny committee had confirmed that Akbar S. Babar’s documents were not verifiable, what action was being taken now? “You are saying that the same action should be taken against all political parties.”

The court suspended Kayani’s ruling and issued notices to the ECP, 17 political parties, and PTI’s Babar, and sought their responses by the next hearing on May 17.