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Friday October 11, 2024

PM Imran Khan dissolves party setup

A 21-member constitutional committee has been formed that is working on the new constitution of the party, says Fawad Chaudhry

By Mumtaz Alvi
December 25, 2021

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain Friday said Prime Minister Imran Khan had dissolved the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) all bodies from Centre to tehsil level across Pakistan, following consultations with the senior party leadership.

Briefing the media after a meeting of the PTI top leadership here, Fawad said all the office-bearers of the PTI’s organisational setup had been removed from their posts, as the forum discussed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) LG elections and the country’s overall situation.

The minister said Prime Minister Imran Khan had expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of PTI in the first phase of LG elections in the KP, while the village council election results were coming and the PTI was still the largest party in the province.

Fawad explained that a 21-member constitutional committee, consisting of national PTI leadership, had been formed that was working on the new constitution of the party.It consists of Pervez Khattak, Mahmood Khan, Murad Saeed, Asad Qaiser, Ali Amin Gandapur from KP, Fawad, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Hammad Azhar, Khusro Bakhtiar, Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar, Saifullah Niazee, Amir Kayani and Usman Buzdar from Punjab.

Likewise, he continued that Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali and Qasim Suri would represent Balochistan, while Imran Ismail and Ali Zaidi from Sindh and Asad Umar from the federal capital were made part of the committee.

The minister noted that after the approval of the committee comprising senior members, new organisations of the PTI would be constituted.He emphasised that PTI was the largest political party in Pakistan, which had the status of a national federal party, whereas Imran Khan is the leader of the federation and his vote bank was everywhere from Gwadar to Khyber and from Karachi to Lahore.

He made it clear that no party other than PTI was capable of fielding candidates for 1100 to 1200 seats of the national and provincial assemblies in the general elections and that PPP is now the party of Sindh, whereas the PMLN has confined to Punjab only.

As the opposition becomes more vocal in its demand for the removal of present government and is hinting at an anti-government drive, Fawad cautioned if the PTI’s politics was affected, it would affect the politics of Pakistan badly.

Fawad asserted that there was no concept of family politics in PTI, as Imran Khan never allowed personal relationships to dominate his mission in his political career.“If the culture of PPP and PMLN comes to PTI, there will be no difference between them and us,” Fawad said and pointed out again that prime minister had expressed displeasure over the distribution of party tickets in the KP’s LG elections against which many complaints were received.

He said the prime minister has expressed extreme displeasure over distribution of party tickets among the relatives of the PTI leaders.He said the meeting had decided that a special committee would be formed to look into the matter of giving tickets to relatives of PTI leaders and in future such cases would not be decided at the local level, rather they would be sent to this committee and which would decide whether to give tickets or not.

Fawad emphasised PTI considered local government institutions very important for democracy.The minister contended that KP Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had been given responsibility for the second phase of LG elections in the KP and a ticketing mechanism for the elections would be set up with the approval of the prime minister.

Fawad said, “The decision on tickets for local government elections in Punjab would come to a committee consisting of PTI’s senior members which would decide the candidates at the central level so that no issues like resentment may come up at the local level”.

Talking about the Opposition parties, he said there have been rumours of ending former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s sentence. “How can the sentence of a convicted person be overturned?” The premier recalled that the court had disqualified Nawaz in the Panama Leaks case, and to date, he was unable to provide a money trail for his assets. “How can a convicted person become the prime minister after having his sentence revoked?” he questioned, according to sources. The prime minister said if convicted persons had to be released then the doors of all jails should be opened.

To a question, the minister said the finance bill was not a personal bill of PTI, and if the opposition did not want to go to the International Monetary Fund programme, they should come up with an alternative solution.

He again reminded that billions of dollars had been borrowed by the past regimes of PPP and PMLN, which had to be repaid by the present government.Fawad said the opposition had announced that they would table a no-confidence motion against the Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani but they failed to do so.

He said a formal report of the KP local government election results had not been presented to prime minister because the results in village councils were still being compiled.Prime Minister Imran Khan Thursday asked the Punjab government and PTI leadership to begin homework for the upcoming local government elections in the province as he had already announced to personally oversee the related preparations.