KOHAT, April 25: The Awami National Party (ANP) high command has warned party’s district office-bearers on the complaint of ‘old guards’, who alleged that they had started to follow the precedent set by some MMA leaders, particularly to pressurise officials to pay them money.

The issue of pressurising officials to pay them money, the race for becoming advisers to the chief minister and central coordination secretary had already caused rift in the party, dividing it into two major groups opposing each other in the district.One of the old guards alleged that those running from pillar to post to get lucrative slots by hook or by crook included some senior party leaders and rich members.

The group of the old guards was led by former ANP district president Pir Ghalib Shah, Hamid Ibraheem Paracha, Shaukat Khadar Khel, Saeed Ahmed Bajji and Qaiser Khan. These stalwarts started demanding posts to keep the ‘vested interest’ away from the party affairs which could earn bad name and also sent the party back into the abyss.

Otherwise, they had “no desire to get the slots because they had been with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and understood the ideology and the course of action and secondly due to the age factor”. They had also supported and recommended the name of the newly elected minister for housing and construction, Malik Amjad Afridi.

The other group comprised comparatively younger people had not held elections in the party at the district level for the last many years and reportedly wanted to run the district affairs for personal interests.

Some of the office-bearers, commonly known in Kohat as ‘group of four’, had reportedly demanded monthly Rs30,000 from some officials one of whom wrote a letter to ANP central president Asfandyar Wali Khan to tame them. The party chief had handed over the case to the provincial president Asfrasiab Khattak, who issued show-cause notices to the group.

Interestingly, the three active members of the group, as one left them after the notice, had started visiting the aggrieved officials, asking them to give them favorable response of the notice so that they could be cleared of the charges.

One of them happens to be the younger brother of a former MPA, who allegedly ran ‘affairs’ on behalf of his brother like transfers of teachers on payment, allotment of cabins by the Tehsil Municipal Administration and distribution of flour quota in 1997. The people had lodged a complaint with his brother, who during a news conference alleged that another ANP lawmaker from Kohat had sold his vote during the Senate elections.