ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Thursday said Ziaullah Afridi, the PTI provincial minister for mines and minerals, who was arrested earlier today by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission on corruption charges, will have to resign from his post till he clears himself.
Read: PTI provincial minister, 10 others arrested by NAB.
“Ziaullah Afridi has put in a lot of work for the PTI and I was very disappointed after learning about his arrest by our NAB,” said Khan.
“But I had promised that our government will not interfere in NAB’s work and let me make it clear that the KP NAB is the only impartial body in the entire country,” said the PTI chief.
Talking to media personnel after an intra-party meeting in Islamabad, Imran Khan said the KP NAB was not like the federal one, whose chairman had been handpicked by premier Nawaz Sharif and PPP chief Asif Ali Zardari.
Imran Khan said he was proud of the fact that his party had delivered on its promise by formulating an independent accountability body in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
He said during the party meeting, a committee was formed to scrutinise the selection of nazims in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“A massive 40 to 45 billion rupees is going to be at the disposal of the local government and we want to make sure that our Nazims have an upright character and can take responsibility.”
Imran Khan also lauded Rangers’ efforts in Sindh, saying their actions had checked crime in Karachi.
Meanwhile, KP Chief Minister Pervez Khattak said that Afridi will not be a part of KP cabinet as long as investigations are going on against him.
‘PTI MNAs to return salaries for being absent from NA’
Imran Khan also said it had been decided during the meeting that PTI members of National Assembly will give back the salaries they received for the period the party had been “absent from the assembly.”
PTI MNAs had resigned from the National Assembly during the sit-ins against the government in Islamabad last year. Even though the resignations had not been approved by NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, the PTI chose to stay away from the assembly for almost seven months, making a return in April 2015 to attend the sessions on the Yemen issue.
PTI's return to the NA had sparked a lot of criticism both in and out of the legislature, with many terming the party's return to the NA illegal, while others had criticised the party for burdening the national treasury by accepting salaries despite being absent from the NA.
Responding to a question, the PTI chairman said peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban, which Pakistan had brokered, were a positive sign.
“The biggest beneficiary of peace in Afghanistan is Pakistan,” said the PTI chairman, adding that an accessible Afghanistan opens up the whole of Central Asia for Pakistan.
Commenting on the recent influx of PPP members in his party, Khan said PPP had been the only national party whose members were ideological but the politics of “muk muka” between PML-N and PPP had alienated them.
Khan reiterated his earlier claims that 2015 will be the year of elections, saying the PTI team had presented a brilliant case before the poll-inquiry commission.
