Majority of turncoats wish for return to PTI: Hammad Azhar

LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's Punjab Acting President Hammad Azhar has said that most of the former PTI leaders who were "forced" to hold press conferences to announce their detachment from the part are willing to return.

However, he said, that the party supremo Imran Khan will decide whether to allow the turncoats to join PTI again or not.

Numerous PTI leaders including Imran's close aides and bigwigs have left the party on different occasions since May 9 — the day when former ruling party's workers ransacked state installations after the ex-premier's arrest.

"The majority of those who were forced to hold press conferences wish to return to the party. PTI founder Imran Khan will personally decide on the return of these individuals on a case-to-case basis,” Azhar stated in a tweet.

In a separate tweet, the PTI stalwart asked authorities concerned to release all political prisoners.

"Stop turning the criminal justice system into a joke".

Azhar said his colleagues had been languishing in jails for more than seven months "despite being innocent".

“I myself have been falsely nominated as an accused in dozens of fake FIRs despite being not present on any single incident mentioned (one overly imaginative mind even listed me as chucking petrol bombs on mall road),” he tweeted.

The politician, who is a former federal minister, also asked the authorities to stop rearresting people after bail.

“Stop booking people in fake cases after arbitrarily arresting them for holding political association with PTI. Let the people of Pakistan decide who will govern them,” he said.

Azhar's tweet comes days after Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) stalwart Khawaja Asif's claims about former PTI leader Usman Dar trying to restore links with Imran's party.

Dar, a former close aide of Imran, joined a long list of leaders — including Fawad Chaudhry, Shireen Mazari, and Pervez Khattak — who parted ways with the PTI supremo following the May 9 riots.

Earlier, senior PTI leader Senator Barrister Ali Zafar's ruled out the possibility of any former leader getting the party ticket for the upcoming elections, slated for February 8, 2024.

"The PTI has a clear message that those who left [the party] in the past. [they] will not get the tickets and only those who remained steadfast in difficult times will be preferred," the barrister said while speaking on Geo News' programme Capital Talk, in response to a question about a possible return of former PTI leader Usman Dar.

The PTI senator had said from his latest conversations with Imran and other senior leaders, that the party has a policy of not accepting anyone who parted ways.

He said that he doesn’t know if the policy will change later or not.

The PTI has been gripped by multiple legal and political hardships as it faces battles in the court as well as disintegration as a number of its key leaders have quit the party, mostly in condemnation of the May 9 events.

The party members took to the streets after Imran was arrested in the £190 million settlement case from the Islamabad High Court premises.

A crackdown was also launched against those involved in the events, leading to the arrest of hundreds of party workers and leaders — including Vice-Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi.