ISLAMABAD: The first meeting of the central committee of the “Founders Group” of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), a group recently formed by party dissidents, will be held in the first week of September in Islamabad to devise the future plan of action.

Talking to Dawn here on Wednesday, the head of the “Founders Group” and former information secretary of the PTI Akbar S. Babar said the group had been formed to mobilise genuine workers of the PTI who felt dejected and frustrated over Imran Khan’s act of joining hands with forces of the status quo.

Mr Babar said that first cousin of PTI chairman Imran Khan and one of the founding members of the party Saeedullah Khan Niazi had also recently joined the group and he would be attending the first meeting of the central committee of the party.

Mr Babar said that they did not have a plan to register the group as a separate party as they considered themselves to be “genuine PTI”.

He said that they wanted to see the party running according to its original constitution which had been drafted at the time of the party’s formation some 20 years ago.

In his apparent reference to the formation of a party by former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf from within the PML-N with the name PML-Q in 2002, he said that Mr Khan was in fact heading the “PTI-Q”.

Mr Babar said they would contest their claim of being the “genuine PTI” before the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) before the next general elections.

When contacted, Saeedullah Khan Niazi, who is also the head of the Niazi tribe in Mianwali, stated that the PTI led by his cousin Imran Khan had deviated from its core ideology and joined forces of the status quo.

Mr Nizai said that he was the member of the team which had drafted the party’s constitution and was also the first president of the party’s Punjab chapter. He said that he had decided to strengthen the hands of PTI ideologues who were striving to liberate the party from “clutches of political qabza mafia that controls the PTI today”.

He lamented that Mr Khan had betrayed the cause of change by joining hands with forces of the status quo. He said the PTI belonged to the people of Pakistan and “it cannot be allowed to be auctioned to the highest bidder”.

“If it is not liberated from clutches of the corrupt mafia, the PTI and the cause of change would both suffer irreparable loss,” he added.

The PTI, however, completely disowned the Founders Group, saying that those who had formed the group had nothing to do with the party as they had either left or had been sacked from the party several years ago.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2016