PESHAWAR: Activists of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and supporters of dissident MPA Javed Naseem scuffled and fired in the air on Monday, following PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s decision to terminate the membership of the lawmaker for violating party discipline.

PTI’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa general secretary Khalid Masud said workers of the Insaf Youth Wing, Insaf Students Federation and Insaf Women Wing were expressing their anger over the MPA’s decision to support independent candidates.

The workers surrounded Mr Naseem’s residence and chanted slogans against him. Supporters of the MPA also gathered at the place and raised slogans in his favour and fired shots in the air, according to PTI sources.

Mr Naseem insisted that he was still a member of the party and had not been expelled by the chairman. “I am an obedient and ideological worker of Imran Khan and will cast my vote for PTI’s candidate in the Senate election.”

Mr Naseem, who was elected MPA on a Peshawar seat in the last general elections, has been at loggerheads with the PTI-led KP government over the issue of disbursement of funds for development schemes.

Imran sacks ‘dissident’ lawmaker for violating party discipline

In October last year he publicly raised the slogan of “Go Khattak, go” in protest against what he called non-approval of development funds for his constituency by Chief Minister Pervez Khattak.

Ten days later, the party served a show-cause notice but he was let off the hook when he tendered an apology saying he would abide by the party’s decisions and its principles.

But things never improved and Mr Naseem continued to complain against the provincial government.

His recent move to second the nomination papers of two independent candidates for the Senate, Waqar Ahmed Khan and Fauzia Fakhru Zaman, enraged the party’s chairman who issued a three-page show-cause notice listing charges against the MPA.

“He (Mr Naseem) has been terminated. Enough is enough,” a provincial leader of the PTI said, adding that the notice was issued to the MPA on Feb 28.

“I have just sent a reply to the notice,” Mr Naseem said, adding that only the PTI chief, and not anyone else, could cancel or terminate his basic membership. “My vote will go the PTI because I accept Imran Khan as my leader,” he said.

A PTI leader claimed that Mr Naseem had been violating party discipline for one and a half years but this time he had attracted the notice of the chairman. “Since Imran Khan has been campaigning against the sale of votes in the Senate polls, how can he tolerate that his party’s MPA indulges in the same practice,” he said.

Published in Dawn March 3rd , 2015

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