ISLAMABAD, May 30: A number of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders are planning to visit Jeddah to meet party Quaid Nawaz Sharif after receiving reports that the party chief is about to finalize the names of the new office-bearers, sources told Dawn here on Monday. The sources said PML-N Senior Vice-President Saranjam Zamindar and the former senior vice-president of the party’s NWFP chapter, Abdus Subhan Khan, had already reached Jeddah to hold a meeting with Mr Sharif.

According to the sources, suspended member of the party MNA Khwaja Saad Rafiq and vice-president Mushahidullah Khan are also planning to visit Jeddah in the first week of June to discuss the party’s internal issues with Mr Sharif. Former NWFP chief ministers Pir Sabir Shah and Senator Mahtab Abbasi had recently returned from Jeddah.

They said other party MNAs and leaders were also expected to go to Jeddah next month. They said Nawaz Sharif had invited some of the leaders for meetings while others were planning to go there on their own.

They said there had been great resentment among the party workers and leaders due to delay in the completion of reorganization process despite the passage of over five months.

It may be mentioned that PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif on December 20 last year, dissolved the party’s Central Working Committee (CWC) and all the provincial organizations and announced that the party would be reorganized soon to get best possible results in the next general elections.

Mr Sharif had appointed Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa, Pir Sabir Shah, Mamnoon Hussain, Sardar Yaqoob Nasir and Hafiz Hafeezur Rahman as chief organizers of the Punjab, NWFP, Sindh, Balochistan and Northern Areas, respectively.

Later, on February 3, Mr Sharif approved the party’s organizational committees in all the four provinces and directed them to complete the task of finalizing the party’s reorganisations in the provinces within 45 days. However, the sources said, the organizational committees failed to complete the task within the given timeframe due to rift in the party at local level at some places.

When contacted, PML-N Information Secretary Siddiqul Farooque said the delay in the reorganization process was due to some “local problems and exigencies like deaths and marriages etc.” In response to a question, he said, there were “few problems” in Rawalpindi, Multan and Bahawalpur, but those had been overcome.

Mr Farooque further said it was the desire of Nawaz Sharif to announce the names of office-bearers in all the four provinces and districts in one go. He said as the organizational committee of the NWFP had finalized the names very late, therefore, Mr Sharif did not announce the names of office-bearers in other three provinces.

PML-N Secretary-General Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, when contacted, claimed that Mr Sharif would announce the party’s new office- bearers in a couple of days as he had received the recommended names from all the organizational committees. He said Mr Sharif had told him that he (Mr Sharif) had been receiving a large number of guests in Jeddah and therefore, so far had not gone through the lists.

In reply to a question, Mr Jhagra said the visits of the PML-N leaders to Jeddah had nothing to do with the reorganization process. He claimed that Mr Sharif would not make any change in the names, sent to him by the party leadership from Pakistan.