ISLAMABAD, April 2: Prime Minister’s Adviser on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik has sidelined several officials who were believed to be close to former interior minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, sources told Dawn on Wednesday.

The adviser has suspended the ministry’s weekly media briefings and restricted the role of its spokesman Brig (retd) Javed Iqbal Cheema to his basic job as head of the National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC).

Mr Cheema was serving in the army when President Pervez Musharraf made him the cell’s chief in 2000. He held the last media briefing on Mach 25.

The interior ministry started weekly media briefings on the pattern of the Foreign Office on the directives of former prime minister Shaukat Aziz after the Lal Masjid operation in Islamabad in July last year.

“It is expected that someone else will conduct weekly media briefings on law and order

and security issues,” an official said.

He said Mr Malik had asked Mr Cheema to restrict his activities to the NCMC and not to give any statement to the media in his official capacity.

The sources said the services of the ministry’s Coordination Director Col (retd) Rauf, another close aide of Mr Sherpao, had been terminated.

The fate of Media Director Nawazish Ali also hangs in the balance as a new media coordinator has been appointed.

Mr Ali was an official of the Press Information Department working in the ministry on deputation. He was later inducted into the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

A source alleged that he had acquired a plot of land in the capital’s Sector I-8 under a scheme launched by the CDA for its employees and rejoined the interior ministry to become the media director.