Pervez Khattak quits KP PTI president’s slot

PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader and former chief minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pervez Khattak on Thursday surrendered the party’s provisional presidential position. PTI Chairman Imran Khan had earlier claimed that “two of our senior members from the negotiations committee I had formed, Pervez Khattak and Asad Qaiser, were called for a meeting by the intelligence agencies. They have now been illegally detained in a safe house and are being forced to quit PTI for their release. In the law of jungle, might is right and the weak have no protection.”

However, Pervez Khattak and Asad Qaisar suddenly appeared and held an emergency press conference.Khattak said he had held some discussions with his friends and decided to quit the party’s provisional presidential position.

Earlier, there were rumours that Pervez Khattak and Asad Qaisar were invited to a meeting “at an unknown location” and were then stopped to leave till they left the party.

Before leaving for the meeting, Pervez Khattak had told the media that he would neither leave the PTI nor Imran Khan.Meanwhile, other senior PTI leaders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa told The News that they were also approached by some influential people and invited to the same meeting at “an undisclosed location”, but they avoided to join them.

“I told them I am away from home and would not be able to join them. They told me that besides Pervez Khattak and Asad Qaisar, former governor Shah Farman would also be going with them,” a senior PTI leader said on condition of anonymity.

There were also reports that former chief minister Mahmood Khan was also invited to the same clandestine meeting but it was not true. The PTI leaders in KP had been in hiding since May 9 and complained that they were under extreme stress to quit their party.

One such senior PTI leader in KP told The News that he would consult his party people before making any decision and threatened to quit politics if pressure was exerted on him. “We are respectable people and this is an insult if we are pressured to quit our party. Better to quit politics then,” he said.