PMLN asks Punjab MPAs to be in Lahore

LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) has called all its MPAs from the Punjab to Lahore with instructions that none of them will leave the city till further instructions.

Party sources said on Thursday the party had called all its MPAs to Lahore owing to the increased political activities vis-à-vis a no-confidence motion tabled in the Punjab against Usman Buzdar.

Sources said that the leaders of the united opposition were in touch with each other as well as the dissident groups of the PTI under Aleem Khan and JKT. The sources claimed that at present the names of PMLN’s central vice-president and leader of the opposition in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shehbaz and PTI’s leader Aleem Khan were under discussion for the next Punjab chief minister.

However, they claimed that a new name may come as a surprise from the PTI’s dissident groups as a consensus candidate. They said both the Aleem Khan and JKT groups were trying to gather one third of the PTI’s MPAs in the Punjab Assembly after which they could make a new forward block and in that case the defection clause would not apply to them. The sources in the PMLN said the party leadership was also contacting the angry PTI members and trying to convince them to join PTI’s forward block.