The Daily Morning Voice Online Desk: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday decided to issue a notification confirming PTI chief Imran Khan’s victory in by-elections on seven National Assembly seats that was earlier withheld for his alleged failure to submit details of the party’s funding to the electoral body. A five-member ECP body headed by Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja announced the decision that was reserved on Dec 20 last year.

Imran had not submitted details of the party’s funding sources while contesting by-elections from NA-22, NA-24, NA-31, NA-108, NA-45, NA-118 and NA-249 in October last year. The commission had issued a notice to the PTI last year, asking it to provide details in the prohibited funding case, commonly referred to as the foreign funding case. A notice had been issued to the PTI in the prohibited funding case after the ECP ruled on August 2 that the party had received funding from “prohibited sources”.

The notice was issued as the Political Parties Order 2002 required that before taking punitive action against any party believed to be receiving illegal funds, a ‘show cause notice’ has to be issued to the party. Since the issuance of the ‘show cause notice’, PTI had repeatedly been seeking more time to file its reply. The PTI lawyer had challenged the show-cause notice and termed it illegal. The ECP’s legal representative had stated that the process of investigations had been completed and the PTI was part of it before the scrutiny committee for four years and before the ECP for eight years and not once it had demanded cross-examination of the witnesses.