PTI extends intra-party elections to Oct

PESHAWAR - Excusing the delay in the preparation of voter list, Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf has postponed the party election at all level and has decided to hold the election in the next month of October.Talking to The Nation, one of the strong candidates for provincial presidency, Zahid Hussain, said that it is not an easy task to arrange elections on the fixed date.He said that the party has so far not announced any fixed date for election but it was expected by September 15. He confirmed that now the elections have been postponed due the preparation of voter list. He added that soon voter list would be completed and it is possible that it will take only two to three weeks.  Though the party has announced casual schedule for election but the fix date would be announced later.  The sources said that there are speculations that some leaders of the Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaf are expecting that PTI will not complete their election as the consecutive delaying tactics have made the elections a question mark.Earlier, it had been decided that the party election will be held at central level from September 15 but now the PTI leadership has said that due to the delay in the process voter list, elections were not held on its due date and now the party leadership have decided to hold election in the first and second weak of October.The sources within the party said that in the first phase the leadership at union council level will be elected and after that election at town, Tehsil, district and Provincial level will be held respectively.Earlier, party chairman Imran had dissolved all regional bodies by constituting regional steering committees in all the provinces, a move that was aimed to pave way for holding party elections. However, the party’s top leadership held many meetings to resolve all outstanding issues but failed to generate an agreement to hold intra-party polls before the next general elections.So far four panels has been nominated which include panel of former PTI provincial information secretary Zahid Hussain, panel of Parvez Khattak, Shaukat Yousafzai and panel of Asad Qaiser.  It has been decided that lections would be held for each and every position so that no body could question justification of new position-holders, who would take the party into general election.The sources added that that apparently all the four panels were equally strong but it would decide the time of election that who would get the support of majority. He rejected the reports that differences have been surfaced in PTI ranks on the issue of party election.He said that the party election was a democratic process and each panel had the right to field their own candidate for party designations. He also mentioned that several workers in Swat and southern districts are supporting his panel and campaign for mustering support of maximum candidates is underway. 

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