ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is facing severe criticism from its ranks over the recent meeting of Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as it is being dubbed as a departure from the stated policy of the party that refuses to accept Nawaz Sharif as a legitimate ruler, The Nation has learnt.
“We are facing much criticism from within the party ranks as well as from the supporters of PTI after Chief Minister Pervez Khattak met with the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday in Islamabad,” a party leader said wishing not to be named.
A source privy to the development said that PTI’s Central Secretariat in Islamabad and the senior leadership of the party had received a number of telephone calls and messages from the party supporters criticising meeting of CM KP with Prime Minister.
KP CM Pervez Khattak, on Wednesday not only attended a meeting in PM office chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself and attended by chief ministers of all provinces to devise a strategy on polio eradication in the country but also separately met with the PM ahead of the meeting. Background discussions with some officer bearers of PTI reveal that party’ senior leadership is facing condemnation within the party as some party officer bearers are of the view that it is a complete reversal of PTI chief Imran Khan’s stated policy in this regard.
An insider of PTI said that the party had decided to attend the polio meeting, as it was the matter of health of millions of children of the province.
Khattak met with the PM almost after five months, as it was the stated policy of the party that it neither accepted Prime Minister nor the federal government that had come through engineered elections and would not interact with PM in any meeting. Imran himself had announced that the KP Chief Minister would not attend any meeting that would be chaired by Prime Minister.
The meeting of Council of Common Interests (CCI) even could not be held for the last some months, as CM Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was unwilling to attend in the light of the party policy.
PTI MNAs on the advice of Imran have already submitted their resignations before the Speaker National Assembly on the grounds that the party did not accept the Parliament that was formed through rigging in general elections.