PESHAWAR, Feb 27: Pakistan People’s Party’s provincial president Khwaja Mohammad Khan Hoti said on Wednesday that he would resign if the NWFP Assembly members who betrayed the PPP in the Senate election were not removed from the party.

Talking to Dawn, he said he would expose at a news conference those who had allegedly hatched a conspiracy against the party at the residence of former minister Naseerullah Khan Babar.

“I will resign if the renegades are not taken to task. I have always taken a principled stand and I will never allow turncoats to stay in the PPP,” he said.

He accused Mr Babar of siding with the turncoats.”Mr Babar had always opposed the wrongdoers and stood by his principles but this time he sided with the opportunists, he said. He said the former minister had appreciated the dissidents’ role in the election.

“I will soon unveil the conspiracy hatched against the party,” he said.

In the past, he said, Mr Babar’s stubbornness had forced Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Pervez Khattak and others to quit the party and now again he was acting against the PPP’s committed workers and leaders.

Mr Hoti said former senator Asif Ali Zardari had condemned the role of the nine MPAs who had ditched PPP nominee Sardar Ali Khan in the election.

He said the PPP had fielded two candidates and it could have won both the seats like the Awami National Party and the PPP (Sherpao).

EVIDENCE: Provincial chief of the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarian, Khawaja Mohammad Khan Hoti, has claimed that he has evidence that horse-trading took place during the recent Senate elections, adds PPI.

Quoting the statement of Khawaja Hoti before newsmen at the Peshawar Press Club on Thursday, provincial organizer of the People’s Students Federation Farah Aslam said Khawaja Mohammad Khan Hoti had audiocassettes of the bargain held during the Senate election. She further quoted the provincial president who said: “I can face the press and will hold dialogue with the parliamentary party in this regard”.