Imran Khan, the party’s chairman, and other party officials, including the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were each fined Rs50,000 by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday for breaking the rules governing the impending by-elections.
The ECP claims that PTI officials, including party leader Imran Khan and KP CM Mehmood Khan, attended a rally in Peshawar and accessed public resources in advance of the by-elections.
Shahabuddin, the District Monitoring Officer (DMO), Peshawar, had given notices to the PTI chair, the KP CM, and others following the breach and was looking for an explanation. Before the DMO, the attorneys representing Mehmood Khan, and cabinet members appeared. They also provided written responses.
According to a representative of the ECP, the DMO fined Imran Khan, Mehmood Khan, provincial cabinet members Taimur Saleem Jhagra, Ishtiaq Urmar, Shaukat Yousafzai, Kamran Bangash, Anwar Zeb, Muhammad Iqbal, Khaliq-ur-Rehman, and Wazir Zada each Rs50,000 for providing an unsatisfactory response. They had until September 18 to deposit the fine into the state exchequer.
The ECP also wrote to the governor and chief minister of KP, requesting that they respect the rules of conduct for the by-elections when Imran Khan holds his rally in Charsadda on September 17.
