KARACHI: A day after removing 11 of its elected local government members, the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Sunday expelled six more elected members for violating party directives by abstaining from voting during June 15 election for Karachi mayor and his deputy.

The expulsion notifications were issued by the PTI’s Sindh chapter president, Haleem Adil Sheikh, who announced that Muhammad Idrees, Malik Akhtar Gulsher, Abdul Moeed, Imran Parwani, Salman Khan and Muhammad Ali Raza were no longer associated with the party.

The notices said the members were “expelled from PTI immediately” as they had committed an offence chargeable under Article 63A (disqualification on grounds of defection, etc.) of the Constitution and Section 231 (qualifications and disqualifications) of the Election Act, 2017.

The members had either not submitted replies to show-cause notices issued to them or their replies were deemed unsatisfactory due to being written in a “stereotypical, slipshod manner” as all of them had submitted an identical reply, the notices said.

Action taken for violating party directive to vote for JI mayoral candidate

After the latest decision, the number of sacked PTI’s elected representatives rises to 17, as 11 elected members were expelled on the same grounds of violating party orders to vote for Hafiz Naeemur Rehman, the joint candidate of the Jamaat-i-Islami and the PTI, on June 15 mayoral election.

The absence of more than 30 elected members of the PTI on the election day had led to the defeat of the JI candidate and victory of Pakistan Peoples Party’s Barrister Murtaza Wahab as the city mayor.

The 11 members expelled from the party on Saturday included Asadullah, Salahuddin, Amjad Ali, Asim Hyder, Aslam Niazi, Zubair Musa, Suleman Khan, Azizullah, Muhammad Kabeer, Abdul Ghani and Sanobar Farhan.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2023