Islamabad - Prime Minister Imran Khan is reaching out to consolidate the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI-led) ruling coalition to ensure seamless functioning of his government, sources said on Saturday.
Imran Khan has already held preliminary meeting with the leaders of PTI’s coalition partners from Sindh province, including Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) and Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) last week.
The foreign minister, last week, had held talks with a delegation of the MQM-P in Karachi where both reiterated support for each other.
According to informed sources privy to the development, the meeting decided to start formal meetings next week to iron out and address any differences or reservations of PTI’s allied parties.
It was learnt that Prime Minister has constituted a four-member coordination committee headed by Defence Minister Pervaiz Khattak to meet key leaders of all the allied parties of PTI, including, MQM-P, GDA, Pakistan Muslim League headed by former prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M).
The government’s coordination committee and GDA representatives are likely to meet next week while meetings with top leadership of other allied parties are likely to take place next week.
Sources in ruling PTI say that purpose behind the meetings was to ensure the government remains updated about the reservations and demands of its coalition partners.
They said that decision to reach out to allies has been prompted by Sardar Akhtar Mengal, the BNP-M’s chief when he lashed out at the government over the arrest of four women from Balochistan’s Awaran district few days ago.
Mengal had said that the women were arrested without any warrants. He had accused the federal government of being negligent towards the rights of the people of Balochistan. The NBP-M chief had led a sit-in protest in front of the speaker’s dais in the National Assembly.
However, some sources said that Imran Khan’s timely move to reach out to political allies is out of his compulsion to carry forward his vision about ‘Naya Pakistan’.
On the other hand, sources in the opposition parties had a different account to share insisting that the prime minister’s efforts to reaching out the allied parties has been necessitated by the Supreme Court’s last month’s verdict.
The government, they believed, was striving to comply with the apex court’s directive to the federal government to bring necessary legislation within six months about the extension in the service tenure of incumbent Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa. For this purpose, they argued that government was struggling to keep the ruling alliance intact.
