PESHAWAR: Pakistan Peoples Party is feared to suffer from further grouping in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa if its central leadership fails to address the grievances of senior activists in different districts of the province.

The PPP workers complain that central leadership has abandoned the party in the province. They say that leadership imposes office-bearers on them instead of giving weight to the views of local units of the party.

Some senior workers are also not happy with the statements issued by PPP patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari against Taliban. They say that this policy can create serious threats for them, particularly during the next elections.

Some insiders told Dawn that the replacement of provincial presidents without taking activists into confidence had caused rift in the party in the province. It could be judged easily from the fact that several leaders were not ready to obey the orders of PPP newly nominated provincial president Khan Zada Khan, they added.

“First the provincial president was changed without taking us into confidence and now we are asked to form electoral alliance with Awami National Party and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl in the province but it is impossible for the party to do so,” they said.

Sources said that one of the main causes of PPP’s defeat in the last general elections was its coalition government with ANP in the province where its workers were ignored while its partner focussed on strengthening its organisations in different areas.

“We are not ready to vote for ANP or JUI-F. Our priority will be to field independent candidates in the local government elections,” a PPP leader said. He said that formation of a splinter group by Begum Nasim Wali Khan had damaged ANP and it was trying to cover up its dents through such tactics.

The PPP leader said that Khan Zada Khan himself was aware of the situation and knew that many senior workers and former lawmakers of the party were not ready to support him but he could not surrender as it was a matter of honour for him.

Second option for all the disgruntled PPP workers will be Naheed Khan, former political secretary of Benazir Bhutto, who has become active to reorganise them, according to insiders.

“The real heirs of Bhutto are Fatima Bhutto and her brother Zulfiqar Junior, children of Murtaza Bhutto, and they will be the future leaders of the party,” said a PPP worker.

He said that majority of PPP workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would leave the Asif Ali Zardari-led party if they saw any other option. In that regard, several meetings had been held in Peshawar and in some districts to chalk out a plan for taking disgruntled PPP workers into confidence, he added.

The Peshawar meeting, he claimed, was also attended by some incumbent office-bearers of PPP, who assured their support for promoting Bhutto’s ideology.

However, PPP provincial information secretary Liaquat Shabab, when contacted, said that differences in the party existed at local level in Peshawar and Nowshera but it did not mean that workers would quit the party. “The leadership should call the workers and sort out the differences among them,” he said.

About the differences in Nowshera PPP, he said that senior workers were not ready to support district president Tariq Khattak and they had passed a no-confidence resolution against him. However, he said, internal differences would not lead to replacement of the provincial president.

Mr Shabab admitted that currently PPP was not holding organisational activities as all the leaders were busy in formation of electoral alliance in the province.

He said that the activities of Naheed Khan would not affect PPP in the province. He said there was no possibility that Naheed Khan would work for Zulfiqar Junior.