ISLAMABAD, Dec 18: A senior member of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and former state minister for law Afzal Sindhu on Tuesday resigned his National Assembly seat from Bahawalnagar.

Mr Sindhu, who had already joined Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI), told Dawn that he had quit the PPP because the party had deviated from its ideology and had failed to deliver to the masses despite remaining in power for almost five years.

Mr Sindhu, who was also a member of the PPP’s Central Executive Committee (CEC), said he had decided to join the PTI since the two main parties — the PPP and the PML-N — had already disappointed the masses through their performance.

One party, he said, was ruling in a province and the other at the centre and the people of the country had been suffering at the hands of the rulers. He alleged that the Punjab government was spending all the development funds only in Lahore whereas former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was interested only in developing Multan city while ignoring the other parts of the country.

Mr Sindhu had been sidelined by the party leadership when as the state minister he had released the list of the beneficiaries of the now defunct National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) of former military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf some three years back.

Later, the party leadership suspended his membership of the CEC when during a by-election to a provincial assembly constituency in his area, he allegedly ran the campaign against the party’s nominated candidate.

Mr Sindhu said he was made a member of the party’s CEC none other than by late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto himself. He said the present leadership of the PPP had nothing to do with the original PPP that was founded by Mr Bhutto for the uplift of the poor masses.

A source in the PTI told Dawn that Imran Khan had asked Mr Sindhu to quit the National Assembly.