PESHAWAR: Dissident Pakistan Tehrik Insaf (PTI) Member of National Assembly (MNA) Gulzar Khan has said he intended to stand his ground and reply to the show-cause notice from the party’s general secretary Jehangir Tareen that he has finally received.
In an interview yesterday, he said two points had been raised in the show-cause notice that was sent on his old Peshawar address on August 25 but reached him in his rural Peshawar village on Friday.
“One point is that I have been quoted in the media that I won’t resign from the National Assembly. Second point is that the decision to resign from the National Assembly was taken by the party’s parliamentary committee and its core committee.”
“My reply to the first point is that I have not quit the PTI and have no intention of leaving it. Also, I haven’t formed a forward bloc and have not made an alliance with any other political party. If the decision to resign from the National Assembly and the provincial assemblies is a principled one, then there should be no exception and the PTI MPAs [members of provincial assembly] in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly should also tender resignations,” he said.
Gulzar Khan said the last PTI parliamentary committee was held a while ago and it too only peripherally discussed the issue of resignations from the assembly.
He recalled that PTI Vice-Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi also said on the occasion that there is still time and the issue of resignations could be discussed later. Reiterating that he won’t resign, Gulzar Khan remarked that the selective use of resignations was unilateralism at best and opportunism at worst.
In reply to a question, the retired bureaucrat-turned-politician Gulzar Khan said he and two other MNAs Nasir Khattak and Musarrat Ahmadzeb - have also publicly refused to resign from the National Assembly.
He said they have been attending the sessions of the National Assembly. He hoped Siraj Mohammad Khan, the MNA from Nowshera, would attend the National Assembly session tomorrow.
“Saleemur Rahman from Swat is also likely not to resign. In fact, almost all MNAs don’t want to resign and are hoping that a solution is found through the ongoing PTI talks with the government so that their NA seats are saved,” he explained.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf commonly known as PTI is a centrist, nationalist and communitarian political party in Pakistan, which was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan.
Internews
