KARACHI, May 2: As internal differences within the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf became intense, its Secretary-General, Mairaj Mohammed Khan, resigned from his post and also from the party’s central committee.

Announcing his decision at a press conference at Karachi Press Club on Friday, Mr Khan warned the PTI chief, Imran Khan, to be on guard against those forces within the party and agencies “whose game is to betray and break political parties.”

He also spelt out reasons for his resignation, which he has also mentioned in his letter to Imran Khan. Copies of the letter was circulated at the press conference.

“After working with you in the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf for more than five years, I have come to the conclusion that the way you and some of our ‘non-political’ colleagues wish to build and run the party is beyond my comprehension. I am hereby resigning from the membership of the Central Executive Committee and from the post of secretary-general of the PTI,” Mr Khan wrote in his letter to the PTI chief.

Meraj Mohammed Khan also spoke of the “missed opportunities,” and duality of power, and alleged that the people who were made the party’s chief organizers and chief campaign managers, etc were not really interested in building the party, and made no serious preparations for the local bodies polls or the general elections.

Their basic strategy was to seek government support to reach the corridors of power, he alleged, saying that such elements gave misleading analysis of the ground realities.

Mr Khan admitted that “the PTI is also responsible for the defacing of the constitution, the LFO, etc as it did not resist the authoritarian rule.”

He said for the past many years the country had been in the grip of multiple crises as severe inflation and unemployment had driven hundreds of people to suicide, women had been subjected to gang-rape, “honour killings” and karo- kari, ethnic and sectarian violence, terrorism and criminalization of society continued unchecked, “the judicial system has collapsed” and now when the 1973 Constitution had been violated by the LFO and the supremacy of parliament itself had been undermined, the party did nothing to protest. He also criticized organizational mismanagement.

He claimed that at present there was no elected body in the party other than the central office-bearers, as all the other elected provincial organizations had been “unnecessarily” dissolved. He appreciated Imran Khan for his humanitarian contribution, but was critical of a tendency towards “solo flight.”