RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in the garrison city will remain a divided house on the occasion of the independence day as its two groups will celebrate the day separately.

While one group would take out a rally in a show of strength, the other has invited four local party MPAs to grace its function to be held in a marriage hall. Both claim allegiance to PTI but split after reorganization of the local set up by the central leadership to pick up candidates for next month’s local government elections in Punjab.

 A senior party leader told Dawn that former Nazims who got party tickets for the postponed 2014 LG polls, formed a group which is patronized by the local MPAs Arif Abbasi, Asif Mehmood, Ijaz Khan Jazi and Rashid Hafeez.

 “Organisers Zahid Kazmi and Fayyazul Hasan Chohan did not consider the former ticket holders as potential candidates for the upcoming LG polls and decided to prepare new list of the candidates, and the former ticket holders formed a pressure group for their candidature,” he said.

 He said that old rivals in the party joined hands for this grouping against the appointed organizers as Chaudhry Muhammad Asghar and Ijaz Khan Jazi were known as separate group and Arif Abbasi and Sadaqaat Abbasi were known another group.

 And the MPAs group is resentful over the reorganization of the party.

 “Last week, Arif Abbasi accompanied by Gulzareen Bhatti, Shahid Kiyani, Raja Majid and Raja Muhammad Ali met PTI Vice President Amir Kiyani and Naeemul Haq to pursue party tickets for those who got it in 2014. Senior leaders of the party assured to take up the issue,” said the leader.

But seeing no development in this regard, they decided to form a pressure group.

 PTI’s allies in the city, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Dr. Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), too do not feel comfortable with the new organisers appointed by Imran Khan, claimed the leader. Despite directions from the top leadership to take all friends on board to avoid Cantonment Boards like results in upcoming LG polls, no meetings have been held with Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and PAT so far, he noted.

 Former PTI District President and MPA Arif Abbasi, though, did not agree that there was division in the party but added that he was not part of the new organising set up and is just a party worker.

However, he wanted the party to listen to those who got party tickets for local government elections in 2014 since they had “worked a lot financially and morally” during the sit-in outside the parliament last year.

 Former PTI Punjab Vice President Raja Tariq Kiyyani, when contacted, said groupings within political parties was “something routine” but urged party workers and local leaders to “show maturity and do not discuss the party’s inner problems in public”.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2015

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