Imran didn’t link talks to cases’ withdrawal: Siraj

KARACHI: Jamaat-e-Islami chief Siraj-ul-Haq said on Monday that Pakistan Tehrek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan mentioned his difficulties during a meeting with him, but he did not put any condition of withdrawal of cases against him for the initiation negotiations with the government on the issue of elections. Giving an interview with a private TV channel about recent meetings with the federal coalition government and the PTI leadership on the issue of a persisting deadlock on conducting elections to the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies, he said both the PTI and the government agreed to form committees for negotiations, and his party was also in contact with other political parties.

Haq said that former chief of army staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa had once said in an all-parties conference during the PTI government that when politicians did not sit together, they came to fill the gap.

He expressed the fear that if political parties did not sort out their differences, someone else would come up to fill the gap by either imposing emergency or emergency plus or martial law.

The JI chief said consensus should be developed among the political parties on a date of elections which was acceptable to all. He warned that the people of the country would ultimately suffer in case of any confrontation. He suggested that the chief justice of Pakistan should constitute a full court for deciding the issue of elections. Haq said he was not in contact with the establishment and it was necessary that all state institutions should remain neutral and apolitical for the betterment of the country.