PTI tribunal takes up Imran’s ‘stand down’ request today

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Election Tribunal will today (Monday) take up Imran Khan’s request to ‘stand down’ while it has already rejected his allegation that the tribunal acted against the party discipline.
Upon receiving a letter from Imran, the tribunal issued a brief order on May 1 rejecting all the ‘allegations leveled by Imran Khan’ against its working. A copy of the order is available with ‘The News.’
The PTI chief had asked the tribunal head Justice (R) Wajeehuddin Ahmad to stand down, which he rejected. The tribunal expressed serious apprehensions that there might be some elements which could not savour democratisation and institutionalisation in the party. Orders and observations by the tribunal have been a topic of discussions among political and social circles as well as in the media.
The tribunal is unhappy over the fact that its October 17, 2014 order has been totally ignored and it justifies continuation of its work, mainly because the party leadership has failed to implement the order.
It also rejected Imran’s allegation of acting prejudicial to the interests of the party and blamed the PTI hierarchy for adverse comments in the national press by not ensuring democratic practices within the party as enjoined by the tribunal.
The tribunal rejected Imran’s allegation of renegade individual with dubious background ever appeared before the tribunal. “Lastly, our chairman says, I would therefore call upon you to stand down forthwith and not conduct meetings of the erstwhile tribunal,” the order said.
The tribunal is expected to issue a detailed order, focusing on Imran’s demand that it must stop working, as its orders or observations would no more be regarded as valid for it had outlived after issuing the order of last year.
To the surprise of many in the PTI, after consultations with the party chairman, Secretary General Jehangir Tareen had issued a notification about an inquiry committee, headed by Chaudhry Sarwar while Rai Azizullah would be its member. The panel will probe poor show of the party in the recently-held local bodies’ polls in Rawalpindi, Lahore, Gujranwala and Sialkot cantonment boards.
The party was whitewashed in Rawalpindi, where of 20 board seats 19 went to the ruling PML-N while the remaining one was pocketed by Jamaat-e-Islami. Similarly, of 20 seats in Lahore cantts, the PTI managed to get only five and the results in other two major cities were extremely poor, too.