LAHORE, Sept 25: The Central Managing Committee (CMC) of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) rescinded here on Thursday its previous decision of declaring Mr Waqar Monnoo as unanimous chairman, and decided to hold the election to the office for 2003-04 on Oct 11.

The CMC revoked its controversial decision taken on Sept 18 at its meeting chaired by its outgoing chairman Anjum Salim.

There will be only two candidates from Sindh for the office — Shahid Anwaar and Waqar Monnoo — as the other two have withdrawn their nominations.

When contacted, Aptma-Punjab chairman Arif Saeed said “the CMC had not reversed its previous decision. It actually re-affirmed that its previous decision was correct. However, it had concluded to hold polling for the office of chairman in view of certain new circumstances brought to its notice,” he said. He claimed that Mr waqar had himself offered to contest the election at the meeting.

It may be recalled that a controversy cropped up after the CMC picked up Mr Waqar as “unanimous” chairman of Aptma following the submission of withdrawals of the remaining three candidates by an “arbitration committee”. The committee was formed on the proposal of ex-chairman of the FPCCI Mian Habibullah to select a consensus chairman for avoiding voting scheduled for Sept 25.

However, Mr Shahid had accused the committee of “partisanship”.

Insisting that the supporters of Mr Waqar in the CMC had tried to “bulldoze” the election process, Mr Shahid, who had secured 48 out of 67 votes in the Aptma-Sindh election to get elected to the CMC, first went to the FPCCI for the setting up of a tribunal for a decision on the controversial Aptma CMC decision and then moved the Sindh High Court to obtain a stay in his favour on Wednesday.

Sources say the Aptma CMC had reversed its decision in view of pressure built up by several Aptma members who wanted the current leadership to “let Mr Shahid to contest the election if he wanted so”.