Sardar Idrees accuses CEC, kin of conspiring against him

ABBOTTABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Member Provincial Assembly (MPA) Sardar Mohammad Idrees has accused his party’s District Naib Nazim Sardar Waqar Nabi and his brother-in-law, Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan Sardar Mohammed Raza Khan, of hatching a conspiracy against him to earn the PTI ticket for Waqar Nabi in the next election.

Waqar Nabi has vehemently denied the charge and accused Idrees of inventing conspiracy theories after getting caught for selling his vote in the Senate election.

Sardar Idrees, who was elected from PK-48 constituency in Abbottabad, was named on Wednesday along with 19others by PTI Chairman Imran Khan for selling his vote against the party policy in Senate election on March 5. Sardar Idrees was served with show cause notice by the party.

Idrees had won the 2013 election on the PTI ticket by defeating Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Javed Abbasi who was later awarded the Senate ticket by PML-N and is now an elected Senator.

While talking to The News, Sardar Idrees accused CEC Sardar Raza and his brother-in-law and cousin Sardar Waqar Nabi of being cahoots with “certain” PTI leaders to sideline him by hatching a conspiracy of vote-selling against him.

He said Waqar Nabi had been claiming for months that the party would award him ticket for contesting from the KP- 48 constituency (now PK-37) in the upcoming election.

Sardar Idrees maintained that he had voted according to the party policy in the Senate election. He said Chief Minister Pervez Khattak had admitted it in the presence of the party’s Minister Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani.

The MPA said he was being made a scapegoat to accommodate Waqar Nabi. He asserted that if Waqar Nabi was awarded the party ticket, he will contest the election against him as an independent candidate and “see how he wins!”

Responding to Sardar Idrees’ charges, Sardar Waqar Nabi told The News that these were baseless allegations made by a disgraced MPA who according to Imran Khan and the party had sold his vote for money.

He emphasised that CEC Sardar Raza had never indulged in such petty politics and “everyone knows the hostility of the PTI towards the Election Commission of Pakistan and Chief Election Commissioner.”

Sardar Waqar Nabi said seeking party ticket was the right of every PTI worker and admitted that he was aspirant of the party ticket and would apply for it. “I did not ask Sardar Idrees to sell his vote. He has let PTI and his voters down by selling his vote and he has made my task easier to get the PTI ticket”, he added.

Waqar Nabi recalled that he had supported Sardar Idrees from his native Namli Maira area in the 2013 election.

He advised Sardar Idrees not to drag the CEC into politics. “If Sardar Idrees did not sell his vote and instead followed the party policy in the Senate polls, he should defend himself and convince Imran Khan and the inquiry committee and get his name cleared instead of levelling baseless allegations against him and the CEC.