Internal rifts: PML-N issues notice to MPA

“If the notice is not taken back, I have the right to take legal action against those who issued it,” says Aurangzeb.

PESHAWAR:

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) chapter of the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) issued a show-cause notice to the party’s women’s wing Central Secretary General MPA Shazia Aurangzeb.

In response, Aurangzeb questioned the authority of the party’s provincial leadership, including the provincial president, saying they are not ‘authorised’ to issue any such notice to her. Talking to The Express Tribune, she said that this was against party procedures.

She said she will raise the issue in an upcoming meeting with the women’s wing president, Mariam Nawaz Sharif, in Lahore on Friday.

“I am the central secretary general of the wing and I am accountable to Mariam Nawaz Sharif only,” Aurangzeb said. “The PML-N’s constitution is a contract between its workers and the party and the central authority rests with the central leadership, while the provincial authorities have limited powers.”

The show-cause notice was issued to Aurangzeb by PML-N’s provincial president Pir Sabir Shah on Wednesday for criticising the newly-appointed provincial president and general secretary, Begum Tahira Bukhari and Begum Shaheen Habibullah.

Shah maintained that the PML-N chief, Mian Nawaz Sharif, recently named both the women as the party’s women’s wing president and general secretary respectively, but Aurangzeb refused to accept them.

She has been asked to respond and explain herself within 10 days of the issuance of the notice. Failure to do so would result in her being replaced. She, however, refuted claims of receiving any notice from the provincial leadership and said that she came to know about this through media reports.

“If the notice is not taken back, I have the right to take legal action against those who issued it,” she said.

Commenting on the party reorganising the women’s wing in K-P, she said that all names would be made public once the process is complete.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2012.