LAHORE – The seat adjustment plan between the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the Jamaat-e-Islami seems to be in doldrums as both sides haven’t come up with a formula for each other’s political backup ignoring the fact that general elections are around the corner, TheNation has learnt.
Insiders in both the parties on Friday confirmed that some interest groups on both sides were not letting their parties to strike seat adjustment.
Both sides during a meeting of their top leaderships few days back had formed central working committees to prepare recommendations for seat adjustments and decided to form the provincial committees, besides an earliest contact between the central bodies for exchanging their proposals to reach some kind of understanding to devise a seat formula.
JI Central Secretary General Liaquat Baloch, when contacted said: “We have done nothing to proceed the matter of seat adjustment between the JI and the PTI as only the central committees were formed in the informal meeting of the two leaderships and provincial committees have yet to be constituted to make progress on the issue.”
About the JI’s central committee recommendations on the matter, he said: “Proposals and recommendations can be made only when two sides hold their first formal meeting and exchange views over each other’s weak links and constituencies where they can be politically beneficial to each other.” About contact from the PTI to make some advancement on the issue, Baloch said the PTI leadership had not contacted them so far while JI leader Ameerul Azeem contacted the PTI leaders who told him that they were busy their parliamentary board meetings.
However, PTI Punjab President Ijaz Chaudhary when reached, contradicting Baloch said: “I along with my colleagues held a meeting with JI leader Ameerul Azeem on Friday (March 29) and exchanged notes with him regarding the PTI and JI options for seat adjustments.”
“Similar meetings had also been held between the PTI and the JI leadership of Khyber Pukhtunkhawa and possible options for seat adjustments were discussed. I and my party men in Khyber Pukhtunkhawa will inform our central leadership about the notes or list of possible seat adjustment options and we will hopefully get results on this count in another meeting,” Ijaz added. Sources said the left-winger leadership in the PTI opposed to the idea of going into any form of political arrangement with religious forces, while at the same time the party’s some senior leaders were letting no stone unturned to strike a seat adjustment formula with the JI.
The same group of leaders had proposed to the party high command that the PTI’s popular wave did not need seat adjustment and it should trust its own strength.
While, the right-wingers in the PTI had advised the leadership that they need the religious forces support in Khyber Pukhtunkhawa and their vote pockets in Punjab, besides normalising the situation in the tribal belt if they voted to power.