Disgruntled PTI activists term award of tickets totally unjust

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) angry senior leaders and activists, including noted lawyer Hamid Khan, Thursday termed the distribution of tickets by the party’s parliamentary board as totally unjust.

They also demanded formation a new parliamentary board, as some members of the existing one had either been disqualified by the courts or facing corruption cases in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

At the end of the meeting, a charter of demands was spelt out.

Speaking on the occasion, one of the founding members, Hamid Khan, who also held top party positions in the past, decried the way the candidates were selected for award of tickets for the National Assembly and provincial assemblies’ seats. He pledged not to allow the party to be taken over by the capitalist mafia.

“We shall not let the PTI to become na-ehil Tareen’s party,” he maintained. Hamid clarified that they had not gathered against the party or its chairman but against a mafia of a few people. He emphasised that those who had been declared disqualified or faced NAB cases must be thrown out of the board. He cited the Supreme Court judgement to say that as Nawaz was declared disqualified and could not award party tickets, the same applies to ‘na-ehil Tareen’.

Several party activists, who had applied for the party tickets from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were left out by the board, attended the meeting.

One party activist from Chitral, Falak Naz alleged during her speech that the spouse of driver of former chief minister Pervaiz Khattak had also been given prominent place in the priority list of the PTI candidates for women’s reserved seats in KP Assembly.

Another senior party member, Yousaf Ali said that PTI had swept Peshawar, Swabi, Mardan and Nowshera during the 2013 elections, but this time, 18 tickets had been gifted to four chosen families in disregard of merit. He paid tributes to one of the party veterans and founding member Akbar S Babar and urged Hamid and other seniors to lead the PTI-Nazriyati in fighting the opportunists, who had de-tracked and hijacked the party.

In the charter, the PTI disgruntled activists demanded review of party tickets by an independent parliamentary board, consisting of clean party persons, as even tickets of reserved seats had been awarded to favourites.

They condemned the non-submission of priority list by the PTI for reserved seats for minorities in Punjab. They demanded that the ones, who contested the 2013 general elections, should again be awarded party tickets. The next meeting of the disgruntled leaders has been summoned on June 26.

Meanwhile, several PTI activists and workers remained encamped outside the residence of the PTI Chairman Imran Khan in protest against controversial award of tickets.