MARDAN: A disgruntled leader of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf has announced to contest elections for the Mardan tehsil mayor as an independent candidate against his own party’s contestant.

Kaleemullah Toru announced the decision while speaking to mediapersons here on Wednesday.

He alleged that the district level leadership of the ruling party had not distributed the party tickets on merit for the coming local body elections. He claimed that he had made the decision to contest elections as an independent candidate to convey concerns of the ideological leaders and workers to the central leadership of PTI.

He said that he and his family members had been affiliated with PTI since 2011.

Mr Toru also claimed that majority of PTI’s ideological workers were supporting him.

Mr Toru, who is also the PTI’s sports and culture wing president for Mardan, accused the local leadership of taking decisions inside their drawing rooms and ignoring the ideological activists.

He said that such decisions would harm the party.

He asked the party’s central leaders to take steps to save the party from further damage.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2021