RAWALPINDI: PTI is a divided house in chairperson Imran Khan’s NA-56 constituency in Rawalpindi. During the local government election, the party faced difficulties in tackling the issue of its dissident groups in six union councils (UC).

Soon after PTI named its candidates, disgruntled activists formed six panels to contest the December 5 polls on a separate symbol. The party leadership then stepped in and assuaged the activists’ grievances, to ensure their withdrawal from the elections.

While three panels did announce that they would not be contesting the elections and would support the party’s nominees, the rest did not budge, and instead went ahead with their election plans.

The panels insisted they would ‘gift’ the UC seats to the leadership after winning the elections.

Disgruntled activists are contesting as independents in six UCs

“We had been ignored despite spending 10 years with the party,” said PTI dissident Gul Zareen Bhatti, who is contesting the election as an independent candidate in UC-25 Sadiqabad.

He said that in his UC, people would vote for him instead of the party. He said the biradari system was more powerful in this area than party allegiance.

In UC-19 Satellite Town, Imran Hayat is contesting as an independent and refused to withdraw candidacy. He said PTI should force its nominees to withdraw in favour of these candidates, and if they did not, the ‘bat’ would face defeat in their localities. He said while the party leadership wanted to allocate its election symbol to the dissident candidates over those wrongfully chosen by local leaders, the local party leaders did not write to ECP to make this happen.

A senior PTI leader told Dawn that local PTI leaders distributed the wrong tickets for personal gains, and used the six UCs’ local representatives to form a pressure group, but these panels have become more powerful in their localities.

“Due to internal politics, the party’s votes will be divided in NA-56 and the party may face the repercussions of this on December 5,” he said.

He said that PTI Election Committee chairperson Arif Abbasi visited the homes of the three dissident panels’ leaders and asked them to use party banners, and if they win, he said, he would bring them back to the party.

When contacted, Mr Abbasi said he visited the homes of the groups to convince them to obey the party leadership’s directives instead of dividing party votes.

“I received applications from party candidates that some independent panels were using party flags in their posters and creating confusion among the people about who the real party candidate is. However, the independent candidates refused to accept my advice,” he said.

He said the party decided to give them a free hand and would decide their fate after the elections.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2015