ISLAMABAD: Former finance minister Shaukat Tarin on Sunday formally quit the parliament as Senate chairman Sadiq Sanjrani accepted his resignation.

According to a statement issued by the Senate Secretariat, Mr Tarin met Mr Sanjrani in Dubai and tendered his resignation, which was accepted by the Senate chairman.

Mr Tarin had announced on Friday that he had decided to left the PTI and politics for good, citing financial and health reasons.

According to him, the last two-and-a-half years had been “very challenging” for him, both financially and due to his “deteriorating health” after “double Covid ailment”.

Ex-PTI leader meets Sanjrani in Dubai

“Therefore, at the insistence of my family and friends, I have decided to resign from active politics for good and move on,” Mr Tarin had declared, adding that he was resigning from PTI and Senate.

After quitting the PTI, Tarin has joined a club of those PTI leaders who had parted their ways from party that is presently under crisis since May 9 violent protests, following which its chairman Imran Khan and other senior leaders have been sent behind bars.

Other leaders who had quit the PTI include Usman Buzdar, Fawad Chaudhry, Shireen Mazari, Asad Umar, Usman Dar, Ali Zaidi, Pervez Khattak and Farrukh Habib.

Mr Tarin had served as finance minister in three different regimes in the past — Pervez Musharraf’s government, PPP regime and in the last PTI government. He was appointed the finance minister by the PTI government on April 17, 2021. However, because he was not elected to parliament, his term ended on Oct 16, after which he was made the finance adviser to the then prime minister.

In December 2021, the PTI government managed to get Tarin elected as a senator, allowing him to resume his role as finance minister.

Tarin’s resignation is a substantial blow to the PTI, already reeling from the departure of numerous leaders since May 9.

In February this year, the FIA had booked Tarin in a sedition case pertaining to his alleged attempt to derail a deal with the IMF.

Earlier in August 2022, a pair of audio leaks had surfaced in which a man, purportedly Tarin, was heard guiding Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab finance ministers, belonging to the PTI, to tell the coalition government in the Centre and the IMF that they would not be able to commit to a provincial budget surplus in light of the monsoon floods that wrought havoc across Pakistan.

A month later the FIA in a notice issued to Mr Tarin stated an inquiry had been initiated into the audio leak.

According to media reports, the FIA considered his leaked conversations as an “attempt to disrupt” the IMF loan programme and funds, thereby causing harm to the national interest.

According to an FIR registered by the FIA’s cybercrime, Tarin with “malafide intentions and ulterior motives” induced sitting provincial finance ministers of Punjab and KP Mohsin Leghari and Taimur Jhagra, respectively, for an action against the national interest.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2023