Let’s reunite to win polls, Sattar tells Bahadurabad group

Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan PIB faction chief Farooq Sattar has asked the party’s Bahadurabad faction to reunite and make collective efforts to win the General Election 2018.

Speaking to an Iftar-dinner on Thursday, Sattar said that the party’s vote bank was demanding of them to show political wisdom and end the conflict. “We parted ways on February but now is the high time we reunited.”

The MQM-P had split into PIB and Bahadurabad factions, spearheaded by Sattar and Amir Khan respectively, over an issue of awarding tickets for the recent Senate elections. Since then, they have been at loggerheads.

“I don’t want that the Mohajir vote bank should divide and that is why I went to the Bahadurabad,” he said, referring to his visit to the office before the joint May 5 public gathering. “The ball is in the Bahadurabad’s court; it is up to them to decide [if they want to reunite].”

On the matter of party leader Haider Abbas Rizvi who returned to the country on Wednesday after two years from Canada and then left for Dubai within hours, he commented that he had heard about the Exit Control List but never about an entry control list.

He said that Bahadurabad should tell about the scene. MQM-P Bahadurabad leader and Karachi mayor Waseem Akhtar on Thursday had asked Sattar to join office at Bahadurabad and end the divide. This is not the first time that both the groups have been extending olive branches to each others. They have done it previously several times but in vain.

Meanwhile, speaking at a similar event, MQM-P Bahadurabad convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said that the party had not been divided but purified and the election results would prove this. He said that party remained unaffected by defections, be it by him.

“Some were thinking that the party was over after August 22 and then after February 5, these misconceptions will be cleared on the polling day,” Siddiqui said. “If some people leave the party, it’s not called a divide. The strength of party workers tells that Mohajirs are united.”