Ups and downs in Imran-Tareen affair

ISLAMABAD: The relations between Prime Minister Imran Khan and once his close aide Jahangir Khan Tareen witnessed ups and downs in last couple of months mainly due to ‘power game’ involving elected and non-elected persons exerting their influence at the Prime Minister House, sources told The News here.

The sources said Jahangir Khan Tareen who was head of a government committee that was negotiating with Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) never bothered to take permission from Prime Minister Imran Khan before giving assurance to it in mid of January this year that it would be given administrative powers in three districts including Gujrat, Bahawalpur and Chakwal.

Similarly, the sources said he also assured PML-Q that massive funds would be given to their members of the National and Punjab assemblies to carry out development projects in their constituencies without consulting the Prime Minister House.

The sources said these decisive moves by Jahangir Khan Tareen at his own provided an opportunity to ‘Banigala Group’ consisting of his arch rivals within the party to convince Prime Minister Imran Khan that his close aide was bypassing him and trying to run ‘government within government’.

The sources said when Prime Minister Imran Khan was sitting in the plane and was due to leave Pakistan for Davos on January 21 he was given a paper containing break-up of subsidy given to the owners of the sugar mills and name of Jahangir Tareen was at the top of the list. “The unpermitted political moves and his role in the sugar crisis had started making mind of Prime Minister Imran Khan against his most trusted friend. Jahangir Tareen came to know about it when the prime minister not only removed him from the government committee but later formed a committee to probe into the sugar crisis,” the sources said.

The sources said Prime Minister Imran Khan dissolved Tareen-led committee and gave mandate to Punjab Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar, Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood and Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar to negotiate with PML-Q.

“Jahangir Khan Tareen who was also holding talks with Mutahidda Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) then left Pakistan for London and even switched off his mobile phone for quite some time,” the sources said.

The sources said Jahangir Khan Tareen then decided to return to Pakistan to remove reservations of Prime Minister Imran Khan but to his utter disappointment he was blatantly confronted by an influential bureaucrat at the Prime Minister House who even misbehaved him during a telephone call. “The influential bureaucrat of Administrative Group who now enjoys trust of Prime Minister Imran Khan still thinks that Jahangir Khan Tareen had sidelined him in 2015 when he was the most favourite candidate for becoming chief secretary of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province,” the sources said, adding that according to this officer Jehangir Tareen was acting as deputy prime minister.

They claimed it was another loud and clear message for Jahangir Khan Tareen that he had lost trust of Prime Minister Imran Khan, adding, “He then thought it advisable to go to Lodhran, his hometown, where he discussed this issue with his very close aides.”

The sources said Jahangir Khan Tareen later came to Islamabad and held series of meetings with PTI’s members of the national and provincial assemblies especially from Karachi who had already showed their reservations towards two federal ministers--Ali Zaidi and Faisal Vawda.

“The meetings between PTI’s members of the National and provincial assemblies and Jahangir Khan Tareen also did not go well with Prime Minister Imran Khan who directed him to come to the Prime Minister House for an urgent meeting,” the sources said.

The sources said Jahangir Khan Tareen came for that meeting on February 7 with heavy heart because he came to know that Prime Minister Imran Khan couple of days ago gave a cold shoulder to Moonis Elahi during their scheduled meeting and even informed him that his inclusion as a federal minister was not possible due to NAB’s cases against him. “It was Jahangir Khan Tareen who as a head of the government committee had earlier told Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi that Moonis Elahi would be included into the federal cabinet,” the sources said.

The sources said the relations between Prime Minister Imran Khan and Jahangir Khan Tareen began to improve gradually in the middle of the month of March. They said then a time came at the end of March when Prime Minister Imran Khan invited very few media persons to the Prime Minister House and confided to them that he had seen initial draft of the report on the sugar crisis prepared by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and names of Jahangir Khan Tareen and Khusro Bakhtiar were not mentioned anywhere in this report.

But then came the massive blow out of nowhere and leaked (though government claimed it was duly issued) report of FIA showed that Jahangir Khan Tareen along with other sugar barons benefitted from the subsidy on export of sugar given by the Punjab government, the sources said.

Though Jahangir Khan Tareen in his televised interview hoped that he would mend his relations with Prime Minister Imran Khan but now all depends on the final FIA’s report on sugar crisis that would be submitted to Prime Minister Imran Khan on April 25.