ISLAMABAD, Sept 6: People’s Party Parliamentarians has demanded that the National Accountability Bureau should take action against President’s Principal Secretary Tariq Aziz for his alleged political activities in violation of the service rules.

PPP Deputy Secretary-General Shaikh Mansur Ahmed, in a letter addressed to NAB Chairman Lt-Gen Munir Hafiez, said Tariq Aziz had established an unofficial election cell, comprising his close friends, at Sindh House here to manipulate the elections.

He said the principal secretary had issued directions to the provincial chief secretaries and police chiefs to accommodate requests from the cell and critical appointments had been made, especially in Punjab and Sindh, to ensure support to the “king’s candidates”.

“Tariq Aziz joined the civil service in 1967 and retired this year on attaining superannuation, but he was employed on contract for an indefinite period. He will also head the secretariat of National Security Council, which Musharraf plans to set up as a lever of blackmail over the elected/democratic government/institutions,” the letter stated.

The letter alleges that Tariq Aziz is a favourite of Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam) leaders, the Chaudhris of Gujrat, who patronized him into the position of narcotics control division secretary under the interior and narcotics control ministry, when Shujaat was interior minister during the government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

As the official had maintained close links with Gen Musharraf all along, he was picked up by the general to head the Chief Executive’s Secretariat as his principal secretary, soon after the coup in 1999, the letter said.

The letter alleged: “Aziz is at the centre of all the dirty campaigns of manipulating the local bodies elections, breaking up the PML(N), creating National Alliance, and lately, manipulating elections through pre-poll rigging so as to obtain desired results.

“The planning also includes creation of a forward block in PPP after the elections, in order to have a submissive majority in the parliament in the time to come,” the letter said.