CM back in Peshawar after weeklong stay in Islamabad

PESHAWAR: After staying away from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for more than a week, Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur finally returned to Peshawar on Friday and resumed official activities.

He spent almost a week in Islamabad, apparently waiting for approval from the relevant authorities to meet Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founding chairman Imran Khan at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi. In the meantime, Gandapur used to run the province from the federal capital and even chaired the provincial cabinet meeting via a video link.

Senior government officials close to the chief minister Gandapur, told The News on condition of anonymity that he had left Peshawar for the federal capital last week and planned to meet with Imran Khan, but that didn’t happen, and he was made to wait for approval from the relevant authorities.

“He was supposed to return to Peshawar after the meeting, but was not permitted by the jail authorities to meet Imran Khan in the prison. They kept him waiting for over a week and finally allowed him, along with some other party members, to see the former prime minister on Thursday,” a party leader close to Gandapur told The News.

Pleading anonymity, he confirmed that the chief minister had returned to Peshawar and started his official activities.When reached, Ali Amin Gandapur told The News that he was busy holding meetings related to the annual development programme in Islamabad.

In jail, according to senior PTI leaders, Imran Khan again tasked Gandapur to personally take responsibility for organising protest rallies in the future against the government, particularly for the release of the former prime minister and other party leaders from prison.

Two members of the provincial cabinet had earlier told The News that the chief minister should have come to Peshawar and gone back to Islamabad, as usually it took him only two hours to get to the federal capital in case he was supposed to meet the party founding chairman in the prison.

“He was not sure about his meeting with Imran Khan, and that’s why he had to stay there. It would have been better had he returned to Peshawar and physically chaired the important meetings related to the future of the province,” one of the cabinet members opined.

Gandapur’s week-long absence from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had created multiple rumours, with some of the party leaders claiming that the chief minister was engaged in negotiations with some powerful circles in Islamabad and Rawalpindi to get the party leader freed from jail.

Barrister Mohammad Ali Saif, advisor to the chief minister on information and public relations, when reached, didn’t confirm any secret talks for the release of Imran Khan.Insiders in the party, however, claimed that certain senior people in the party had actively been trying to bridge the gap between their party leader and the establishment, and for this purpose, they had been given access to Imran in jail to make him understand the ground realities.