ISLAMABAD, Feb 5: The leadership of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League has come under scathing attack from the party cadre for releasing a list of candidates for Senate elections from Punjab and Sindh, without holding any meeting of the PML parliamentary board.

Under the party constitution, all decisions about allotment of party tickets should be made by the parliamentary board.

The party had set up a seven-member parliamentary board headed by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz with party’s secretary-general Mushahid Hussain, chief ministers of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, and PML (NWFP chapter) president Amir Muqam as members.

PML workers were perplexed over the release of the list attributed to a meeting held at the president’s camp office in Rawalpindi on Saturday and demanded that Chaudhry Shujaat and Mushahid Hussain should clarify the situation.

PML’s additional secretary-general Iqbal Dar said the list of party nominees reported by the electronic and print media was a conspiracy as any decision on allotment of party tickets was a prerogative of the party’s parliamentary board.

He demanded that Chaudhry Shujaat and Mushahid Hussain should disown the list and said that party workers would resist the decision, if it was not done.

Mr Dar said that the release of the names, especially that of Ahmed Saeed who was yet to apply for the party membership, was against the PML constitution which empowered the parliamentary board to take such decisions.

He said if 117 applications submitted with fee were not considered and nominations were made without the consent of the parliamentary board, the whole exercise of receiving applications was frivolous. He demanded refund of the applicants’ money.

He claimed that no list had been released by the President’s House and whatever was reported by the media was mere speculation because a final decision had to be made by the board.

The PML leader, who belongs to the Hamid Nasir Chattha faction, said party workers were determined to foil what he called a conspiracy hatched against the President’s House.

Apart from other interest groups, Sardar Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari also criticized the release of the list without parliamentary board’s approval and decided to meet President Pervez Musharraf to register his resentment.

Sources said that the name of Ahmed Saeed was included in the list despite the fact that he had not properly applied to the party.

The sources said his name had emerged after a meeting of the rivals of the Chaudhrys — Public Accounts Committee chairman Malik Allahyar Khan and Minister of State Malik Amin Aslam — with President Musharraf on February 1.

The two had opposed Chaudhry Shujaat’s brother-in-law in the local government elections of the Attock district.

The party’s information secretary and Minister of State for Overseas Pakistanis, Tariq Azeem, defended the nomination on the grounds that applications could be submitted before February 8.

He defended the exercise by saying that the names of party candidates were considered at a meeting of top party leaders, which was presided over by the president. The meeting discussed names of suitable candidates which would eventually go to the parliamentary board for a final decision.

He said the parliamentary board would meet after February 8, the last date for receipt of applications.