KARACHI   -   Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Sindh chapter on Sunday expelled six more party members for defying party di­rectives in Karachi mayor elections. 

The members who were expelled had skipped the Karachi mayor elections and not voted for the par­ty’s supported candidates for may­or and deputy mayor. Last month, the PTI had announced support for Jamaat-i-Islami’s (JI) mayoral candidate Hafiz Naeemur Rehman but cracks had surfaced within the PTI’s city chapter with a group of elected UC chairmen and vice chair­men announcing plans to not follow their party decision and to abstain from the voting process.

Despite the party’s reassurance to the JI and directives to party members to make sure of their presence in the June 15 polls, 32 members did not show up to vote and the absence of these elected members led to Rehman’s defeat and PPP’s Murtaza Wahab’s victory. Following the elections, the PTI on June 17 issued show-cause notices to its 32 elected members of the lo­cal government for violating party directives and sought an explana­tion. Sunday’s expulsion orders were issued by PTI Sindh President Haleem Adil Sheikh to Muhammad Idrees, Malik Akhtar Gulsher, Ab­dul Moeed, Imran Parwani, Salman Khan and Muhammad Ali Raza.

The notices said the members were “hereby expelled from PTI im­mediately” and they had committed an offence chargeable under Article 63A (disqualification on grounds of defection, etc.) of the Constitution and Section 231 (qualifications and disqualifications) of the Election Act, 2017. The notices said the mem­bers either had not submitted re­plies to show-cause notices issued to them or their replies were deemed unsatisfactory due to being written in a “stereotypical slipshod man­ner as all of you defecting the party have submitted identical reply”. The development comes a day after the party cast out 11 elected members of the newly formed local govern­ment for violating party directives by abstaining from voting during the election of Karachi’s mayor.