ISLAMABAD: A number of senior leaders, including federal ministers, in the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) are opposed to the idea of making Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed a member of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) for a variety of reasons.

Background interviews with a number of senior PTI leaders revealed that most of the party leaders and workers are particularly angry over Mr Rashid’s diatribe against National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser.

One of the senior party leaders and a federal minister said Mr Qaiser was an old and committed party worker and they could not tolerate anything against him and that too “from an outsider”.

“He [the railways minister] should not have attacked the speaker,” the PTI leader said, adding that Mr Qaiser had served as speaker of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly as well and he knew how to run the parliament in accordance with the rules. He said rules did not allow the speaker to nominate any member in the committee if its membership was complete.

The minister, who also held an important office in the PTI previously, said as far as he knew the decision to include Mr Rashid in the PAC had not been discussed at any forum in the party so far.

Fawad says NA speaker has already met PM, claims issue will be resolved soon

When asked about the railways’ minister claim that he had been asked by Prime Minister Imran Khan to become the PAC member in order to give tough time to Opposition Leader Shahbaz Sharif, the minister said he believed that Mr Rashid was ‘exaggerating’ it.

The railways minister, who is the Awami Muslim League (AML) chief, has been vying to become a member of the PAC for the past few days. He also claimed that he had been given a go-ahead by the prime minister and ‘other powers’ too to become the committee member.

Addressing the railways workers of carriage factory in Islamabad, Mr Rashid had slammed the speaker and reportedly said Mr Qaiser should quote reasons for not allowing him the PAC membership despite having received a letter from the prime minister. The minister alleged that the National Assembly speaker had taken an ‘illegal step’ by appointing Shahbaz Sharif as the committee’s head. Yet he maintained silence due to PM Khan, he said, while announcing that this time he would take the matter to the court if he was not allowed to join the PAC.

He had also disclosed a few days back that the prime minister had directed MNA Riaz Fatyana to quit the PAC membership to allow his entry.

Fatyana suggests party vote

However, Mr Fatyana denied that he had received any such directives from the prime minister.

Talking to Dawn, he said that had he received any such instructions from Mr Khan, who is also the chairman of the party, he would have vacated his seat immediately in line with party discipline.

He advised the prime minister to seek the opinion of the party’s parliamentary group or the cabinet members through voting if they wanted Mr Rashid’s inclusion in the PAC.

Mr Fatyana said it seemed the railways minister was ‘misguiding’ the prime minister on the issue. He said though the assembly rules were silent on the issue, the best parliamentary practices in the world showed that no minister could become a member of any committee.

He said nowhere in the world a minister was a member of the PAC as it became an issue of ‘conflict of interests’.

Moreover, he claimed, a majority in the ruling PTI did not want to see Mr Rashid in the PAC, believing that such a move could spoil the political atmosphere in the committee as well as in the country.

Endorsing Mr Fatyana’s opinion, another senior PTI leader said the speaker had already received two applications from the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with the request to include Khwaja Saad Rafique and Rana Sanaullah in the PAC.

He said if the speaker allowed Mr Rashid to become the PAC member, then it would be difficult for him to deny this right to the opposition members. He recalled that Rana Sanaullah had publicly declared that he wanted to join the PAC only to face off with the railways minister and to give him a befitting reply if he made any attempt to target Mr Sharif.

Speaker meets PM on the issue

When contacted, Informa­tion Minister Fawad Chaudhry confirmed that the prime minister had written a letter to the NA speaker with the request to make the railways minister a part of the PAC.

He said that the speaker had a meeting with the prime minister on Wednesday and the matter would soon be resolved.

The information minister said the railways minister was unhappy over the speaker’s justification that if he allowed him, he would also have to include Saad Rafique in the PAC. Mr Chaudhry said that Mr Rashid complained that he should not have been compared with a person facing corruption charges and presently in the custody of National Accoun­tability Bureau (NAB).

“The issue will be resolved in a day or two. It was due to some miscommunication,” the information minister said without elaborating.

The speaker, however, was avoiding a direct response to the railways minister’s criticism against him, explaining that his office did not allow him to do so.

Talking to reporters during his last week visit to Swabi, Mr Qaiser had reportedly stated that the politician from Rawalpindi being head of his own party was free to speak his mind unlike him as he was bound by PTI discipline.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2019