KARACHI: With the beginning of new parliamentary term, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) found itself embroiled in a controversy on Tuesday when the Election Commission of Pakistan’s move to suspend the membership of its MNA on reserved seat of minority attracted immediate reaction from the deposed legislator, who claimed that he hadn’t rendered any resignation accusing his party of ‘faking’ the whole episode.

Dr Mohan Manjiani had been notified as an MNA on a minority seat on the MQM-P ticket by the ECP.

However, the ECP de-notified the MNA after it received the ‘resignation’ from Dr Manjiani citing ‘personal reasons’ for not retaining the National Assembly seat.

Within hours of the ECP’s decision, Dr Manjiani came up with a denial on a private news channel and described his alleged resignation as ‘staged and set up’ by the MQM-P. He didn’t go into the details, nor mentioned any reason behind his claim.

Minority lawmaker Dr Manjiani says document filed in ECP was not signed by him

He added that he would no more even contact with the party on the subject matter.

He claimed that the resignation filed to the ECP had not been written by him and suspected that the signature mentioned in the document must be a ‘forged signature’.

He said he was in Dubai and would take up his case with the election tribunal.

The startling developments came a day after the social media was abuzz with another claim that the ticket of the reserved seat to Dr Manjiani by the MQM-P was agreed against “certain amount of donation” by him to the party but a dispute had developed between the two sides and the ‘deal’ couldn’t be materialised.

However, the MQM-P came up with its side of the story. In a statement, the MQM-P’s coordination committee said that Dr Manjiani was asked to resign based “on a report of intelligence agencies”.

The resignation, it said, was sought from the minority MNA over his alleged involvement in ‘illegal and anti-state activities’.

“According to these [intelligence] reports, Dr. Mohan Manjiani was also noted as being active in the Indian Embassy in Islamabad,” said the MQM-P.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2024