ISLAMABAD   -   Former prime minister Imran Khan has urged President Arif Alvi to order an “immediate inquiry” against for­mer Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen (R) Qamar Javed Bajwa on charges of repeatedly violating his oath by al­legedly undermining the civilian rule and controlling the country’s an­ti-graft watchdog.

In a letter written on February 14, PTI Chairman Imran Khan asked the President that he, being the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, should institute an inquiry against the former army chief.

While referring to a column of an­chorperson Javed Chaudhry and a video log of TV host Aftab Iqbal, the ex-premier underlined that the rev­elations made by both make it clear that the ex-army chief violated his oath a number of times.

Citing Chaudhry’s column, the let­ter said that retired General Bajwa admitted during his meeting with the journalist that “we” considered then prime minister Imran Khan “danger­ous to the country if he continued to stay in power”. “Who gave him (Gen Bajwa) the power to decide that an elected PM was supposedly a danger to the country if he continued to stay in power,” Khan raised a question.

“Only the people through elections can decide who they want to elect as the prime minister. Taking such a right on himself is in clear violation of his oath as given in Third Schedule Article 244 of the Constitution.” The letter pointed out that Gen Bajwa also admitted that he “managed to get the NAB (National Accountability Bureau) case against former finance minis­ter Shaukat Tarin dismissed. It added that the admission was actually a rev­elation by the former army chief that NAB was under his control, which was again a clear violation of the Constitu­tional oath because the army itself is a department under the Ministry of De­fence and civilian official autonomous institutions do not come under mil­itary control. Referring to the video log of TV host Iqbal, the PTI chief said that Iqbal has also claimed that Gen Bajwa told him in a chat that he had got recorded tapes of then PM Imran Khan’s conversations with him. The former prime minister said that this was again a serious violation of the ex-army chief’s oath and fundamental human rights as well. “The question is why and under what authorization was Gen Bajwa recording confiden­tial conversations?” he asked. Last­ly, the PTI chief referred to his visit to Russia in his capacity as the coun­try’s premier and said that Gen Ba­jwa committed another serious viola­tion of his oath when he publicly went against the then government’s policy of maintaining neutrality in the Rus­sia-Ukraine war. The ex-army chief did this at an international confer­ence – the Islamabad Security Confer­ence – in Islamabad on April 2, 2022, the letter said. The Chairman PTI pointed out that the government pol­icy had arrived at after developing a consensus of all stakeholders includ­ing Foreign Office and retired diplo­mats with relevant experience. Citing Chapter II of the Constitution, which describes the mandate of the Armed Forces and specifically refers to Arti­cles 243 and 244, Khan reminded Alvi it was his “constitutional duty as Pres­ident and as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces to take immediate action and institute an inquiry”.