PM dissolves all PTI bodies after K-P setback

Body formed to chalk out mechanism for awarding tickets with premier having final call

ISLAMABAD:

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday dissolved all organisational bodies of the PTI across the country and dismissed all its chief organisers, expressing his dissatisfaction over his party’s performance, especially the “nepotism” in the recent Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s local government elections in which it lost several seats.

Federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry said the premier had formed a 21-member committee, comprising of senior leaders of the party.

The body has been assigned the task of restructuring and formulating a new party constitution.

From now, the committee would devise a mechanism for the awarding of tickets to candidates, but the premier himself would give the final approval.

The minister said that the committee included Pervez Khattak, Mahmood Khan, Murad Saeed, Asad Qaiser and Ali Amin Gandapur from K-P and himself, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Hammad Azhar, Khusro Bakhtiar, Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar, Saifullah Niazee, Amir Kayani and Usman Bazdar from Punjab.

In addition, Fawad said Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali and Qasim Suri would represent Balochistan in the body.

Imran Ismail and Ali Zaidi Sindh from Sindh and Asad Umar from the federal capital would also be the part of the committee.

He said that after the approval of the body, new organisations of the PTI would be constituted.

Addressing a news conference following a meeting, the information minister, while emphasising that PM Imran was against dynastic politics, said it was decided that awarding of tickets to relatives of PTI leaders would be decided by a special federal committee.

“In future, such cases would not be decided at the local level.  Instead, they would be sent to the federal committee, which would decide whether to give the tickets or not,” he added.

Fawad said PM Imran had expressed his dissatisfaction over the performance of the PTI in the first phase of LG elections in K-P. Referring to the village council election results, he added, the PTI was still the largest party in the province.

“No party other than PTI is capable of fielding candidates for 1,100 to 1,200 seats of the national and provincial assemblies in the general elections,” the minister said, adding that the PPP was now limited to Sindh whereas the PML-N was confined to Punjab alone.

“As members of the PTI, we have a responsibility to fulfill the responsibilities of the federation diligently considering them as national responsibilities.”

Read PM orders action over K-P poll fiasco

The minister maintained that if the PTI’s politics was affected, it would have a negative impact on the politics of the country.

“There is no concept of family politics in the PTI as PM Imran has never allowed personal relationships to dominate his mission in his political as well as cricketing careers,” he added.

“If the culture of the PPP and PML-N comes to the PTI, there will be no difference between them and us.”

The minister said the premier had expressed his displeasure over the distribution of party tickets in the K-P’s local government elections -- against which “many complaints were received”.

“The way PTI should have played its role as a major party was not witnessed in the K-P LG elections,” he conceded.

“The PTI considers local government elections very important for democracy,” he said, adding that K-P Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had been given the responsibility for the second phase of the polls in the province.

“A ticketing mechanism for the elections would be set up soon.”

In addition, he said, the decision for the awarding of tickets for the local government elections in Punjab would be made by PTI’s senior members.

“They [senior members] will decide the candidates at the central level to avoid any issues at the local level.”

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