PESHAWAR: The PML-N’s central and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa leadership dismissed reports on Saturday that the party’s provincial chapter had expelled some senior leaders, including former chief minister Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan Abbasi and former governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra.

The party’s reaction came after a show-cause notice circulating on social media claimed that the KP chapter had removed five PML-N leaders — Mr Abbasi, Mr Jhagra, Arbab Khizar Hayat, Fareed Khan and Esal Khan — from party positions.

The purported notice said these leaders were expelled for “violating the party discipline, disobeying party’s decisions, conspiring to divide the party into two factions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, giving statements against the party leadership in the print and electronic media and making insulting speeches”.

“This [notice] is fake,” the PML-N’s president in KP, Amir Muqam, told Dawn. “We contradict it. We don’t know who has issued this notice.”

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb also shared the notification on her Twitter handle and captioned it “fake” in all capital letters.

The party’s information secretary in KP, Ikhtiar Wali Khan, also rejected the notice in a post on social media, describing it as “photoshopped”. He alleged that someone had used a “fake notice to gain cheap popularity”, adding that the party condemned it.

The episode came amid widening differences between Sardar Mehtab Abbasi and Mr Muqam, the party’s provincial leader.

Some time ago, Mr Abbasi held a press conference in his native town of Abbottabad and accused Mr Muqam of undermining and weakening the party.

This was soon followed by two back-to-back meetings at Mr Jhagra’s residence in Peshawar, where a nazriati (ideological) faction was launched to demand the removal of the provincial president.

Mr Abbasi attended the first meeting, and it was announced that the group would soon convene a meeting of the party’s general council to oust Mr Muqam from office.

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2023