KARACHI: About two months after his expulsion from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), MNA Salman Mujahid Baloch announced on Friday that he was joining the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP).

Accompanied by PSP chairman Mustafa Kamal and other leaders, Mr Baloch told a press conference that he would also resign from his assembly seat.

However, Mr Kamal later said that he would not allow him to resign and all those lawmakers who had switched sides and whose resignations had not been accepted would now play their role in parliament as dissidents.

Of the 24 MNAs of the MQM-P, Mr Baloch is the second lawmaker who joined the PSP. Before him, MNA Asif Hasnain had joined the party but did not resign from his seat.

On Oct 20, the MQM-P had expelled Mr Baloch from the party for serious violation of discipline. Later, some MQM leaders told media that his basic membership was revoked after private TV channels aired the recording of a phone call in which Mr Baloch was heard threatening a local government official of dire consequences.

Last month, he had also met former president and co-chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad.

He was elected from a Karachi National Assembly seat (NA-239) in Keamari in the 2013 general elections. His father, former provincial minister S.K. Mujahid Baloch, had also joined the MQM, but recently he returned to the PPP.

At the press conference, Mr Baloch repeated his allegations that the MQM-P leadership was in contact with MQM-London and the impression that the two groups were functioning separately was an attempt to hoodwink state institutions and the people.

He alleged that a handful of MQM-P leaders had made the party hostage and the leadership was using the party for the sake of its personal interests and corruption.

“I have joined the PSP for the sake of the people,” he said.

He said that MQM-P head Dr Farooq Sattar held meetings with PSP chairman Kamal on his own and “there was no pressure of any kind on him”.

About his removal from the MQM-P, he said that till date nobody had conveyed to him that on what charges he was expelled from the party.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Kamal lashed out at the MQM-P leadership for what he called fooling the people in the name of Mohajirs.

He also criticised them for holding a public meeting in Hyderabad with the help of all their lawmakers elected from Karachi.

Commenting on a recent statement of Dr Sattar that his party did not want division of Sindh, he said that Dr Sattar withdrew from his ‘Mohajir province’ slogans only at a distance of 165 kilometres from Karachi.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2017