RAWALPINDI, Nov 21: A division has occurred in the Rawalpindi Tehsil Assembly because of the tehsil municipal officials’ conspiracies, sources told Dawn.

The sources said on one side, there was Tehsil Nazim Raja Hamid Nawaz, a few councillors and Nazims and some tehsil administration’s old employees, including the tehsil municipal officer (TMO), Najmul Hassan Malik.

The other group consists of about 100 elected representatives from various unions, they added.

Sources said the tehsil administration officials had been influencing Mr Nawaz, and were trying to create differences between the elected representatives and the Tehsil Nazim.

It is in this connection that the tehsil administration officials, in cahoots with Raja Hamid Nawaz, had been pressurizing the chairpersons of the recently constituted tehsil committees to resign.

About 19 committees were formed and unanimously approved in the last session of the tehsil assembly.

These committees have to supervise development works and monitor the performance of the tehsil officials of various departments.

A number of chairpersons of various committees accepted that they were pressurized.

The chairman of Committee for General Administration, Assad Mughal, while talking to this scribe, said: “Just 20 minutes before your phone, I received a call from one of the lady member of my committee, saying that the Tehsil Nazim, Raja Hamid Nawaz, wanted you to resign from the chairmanship of the committee.”

When the Tehsil Nazim was contacted, he confirmed the news, saying he wanted all chairpersons to resign.

“I told him that you are creating splits in the tehsil assembly”, Mr Nawaz said.

He said the selection of these chairpersons was not proper.

“But, the selection was transparent, approved by the house and the Nazim himself. But, now he says that the selection is not proper. I do not know why these people do not allow the system to move forward.”

Some of the committees’ chairmen and members blamed the TMO and a coterie of other officials for all these conspiracies, saying that they did not want their works to be monitored.

A member of the Sanitation Committee, Rashid Abbasi, said: “The contract of the TMO expires on November 24, and he is scrambling for extension which we are not going to endorse. He is desperately trying to create splits among the tehsil members and curry favour with them.”

Mr Abbasi said the TMO was a retired army official, and wanted to hold on to his traditional power.

“His behaviour with public representatives is also improper. He acts as if he is a colonel and we are just sergeants and batmen”, he added.

Similarly, the chairperson of the Justice Committee, Tahira Shaukat, also accepted that she had been pressurized to resign.

“The Nazim has asked all the heads of various committees to resign. I wonder why he demanded our resignations”, she said.

But we won’t resign because we have come with the approval of the house, she added.