ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan on Tuesday threatened to dislodge the present set-up before the Senate elections as he claimed that he had received resignations of his party’s legislators in the National Assembly as well as in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly.

Talking to journalists after a meeting of the PTI’s Central Executive Committee, Mr Khan said: “I have received resignations of my party leaders and will use them at an appropriate time.”

The PTI chief said he would consult top leaders of his party to decide when these resignations should be submitted to respective assemblies. He said the party had decided to accelerate the membership campaign throughout the country and start preparations for the general elections expected to be held in July.

He said the PTI would set up two committees which would go through contracts of mega projects, including the Orange Line Train and Liquefied Natural Gas import projects, and unearth corruption allegedly committed by leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

Says ousted PM likely to be convicted by accountability court by next month in three corruption references

“We believe that massive corruption has been committed by the Sharifs and their cronies in mega development projects,” he said.

Mr Khan said his party had demanded merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa because the gap that came about after the recent abolition of Frontier Crime Regulation (FCR) could again pave way for militancy in the tribal region.

“Extending jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the high court is not enough to bring people of tribal areas into the mainstream,” he added. He said Maulana Fazlur Reh­man was playing a dangerous game in Fata because he thought that the merger would only benefit PTI.

Mr Khan said his party’s Central Executive Committee condemned frequent violations of the Line of Control by the Indian army and asked why such incidents increased when Nawaz Sharif was in trouble.

He said the committee lamented President Donald Trump’s decision to block Pakistan’s funding for the war on terror and urged the US administration to withdraw this decision.

The PTI chairman said that the meeting urged all provinces to reform police to fight terrorism and reduce crime rate in the country.

He said Nawaz Sharif was likely to be convicted by an accountability court by the next month in three corruption references.

Mr Khan said Mr Sharif was bent upon maligning the judiciary. “He (Nawaz Sharif) knows that once he is convicted, he will lose his offshore assets worth billions of dollars,” he added. At a separate press conference, Awami Muslim League president Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the government was afraid of his resignation.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2018