KARACHI: The Sindh advisory council of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf on Friday demanded Prime Minister Imran Khan remove Governor Imran Ismail for “taking wrong decisions” and condemned a show-cause notice issued to senior leader Liaquat Ali Jatoi, calling it a conspiracy to weaken the party.

The demand came from certain PTI leaders whose relations with their party got further strained after the nominations of Senate candidates from Sindh. They met at the residence of their colleague Allah Bux Unnar and discussed several issues, including upcoming Senate elections and the show-cause notice to Mr Jatoi by the party.

“The governor has led a very negative role in Sindh and he has damaged the interest of Sindh,” said a statement issued on the letterhead of the PTI’s Sindh Advisory Council. It was signed by its members Mr Jatoi, Mr Unnar, Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah, Shaukat Jatoi, Mohammad Ayub Shar and others.

The leaders said in the statement that the governor had “failed” to give any performance after assuming office and accused him of ignoring party loyalists for the Senate elections and nominating his “blue-eyed” new entrants.

“In such circumstances we demand that the Sindh governor be removed immediately in the interest of the party to uphold the years-long struggle of our great leader Imran Khan. The governor has made wrong decisions and will keep repeating, which would further deepen the crisis. Today, we show no confidence in him and request the party chairman to replace him with some strong, dedicated, hardworking and effective party loyalist who can make the party stronger,” the statement said.

The provincial advisory council asks Imran Khan to replace Imran Ismail with a ‘strong, dedicated’ party loyalist

Show-cause notice to Jatoi condemned

The PTI leaders also condemned the party decision to issue a show-cause notice to Mr Jatoi for levelling serious allegations of corruption against the party leadership for awarding tickets for the Senate election. The notice was issued to him earlier this week by the provincial chapter of the PTI’s Standing Committee on Accountability and Discipline (SCAD) after he told a news conference in his hometown in Dadu that the party leadership had sold a Senate ticket to a candidate, Saifullah Abro, for Rs350 million.

Addressing the news conference, Mr Jatoi had alleged that Mr Abro had parachuted into the party recently and managed to clinch the Senate ticket. Mr Jatoi, who had himself joined the PTI in April 2017 after quitting the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), stated that the decision to award the ticket to Mr Abro was “simply unjustifiable” and an affront to loyal party leaders and workers.

“Mr Jatoi is an asset of the party,” said the PTI statement. “Rather than giving him an opportunity to air his grievances, which are only for the betterment of the party, a show-cause notice has been issued and circulated over social media. We feel it is a disgrace and conspiracy against the party itself.”

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2021