PESHAWAR, March 7: The provincial president of the Awami National Party (ANP) has accepted the resignation of four joint secretaries of the party's NWFP chapter here on Monday.

Hussain Shah Yousufzai, Pir Fayyaz Ali Shah, Navid Ali Khan (advocate) and Mohammed Ali Khan Mohmand had resigned from their offices in the last week of February in protest against the party's provincial president's refusal to remove Farid Toofan from the office of provincial general secretary.

In a press release issued here on Monday, a spokesman for Bacha Khan Markaz, the headquarters of the ANP, said that the party's provincial chief had accepted the resignations of the joint secretaries and the offices stood vacant.

"At the expiry of a seven-day deadline, which had been set for the joint secretaries to reconsider their decision, the party's provincial chief has accepted their resignation," said the press release.

Nasim Wali Khan, according to the press release, had asked the four to reconsider their decision and they had been given seven days to withdraw their resignations. However, none of them withdrew the resignation till March 6 following which they were accepted.

As a result of the ongoing tussle between the top ANP leadership, the number of offices that have fallen vacant has risen to eight. Earlier, Nasim Wali had accepted the resignations of the provincial chapter's Senior Vice-President Syed Aaqil Shah, Vice-President Imran Afridi and Secretary Information Mian Iftikhar.

All of them had tendered their resignations on Feb 24 in protest against the "rude attitude" of Farid Toofan, the provincial general secretary who was axed from the party office after the party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan suspended his party membership on March 2 at the height of his differences with his mother Nasim Wali Khan.