PTI leaders clash as senior leadership resigns after protest fiasco

PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leadership shows signs of a split after Islamabad protest rally failed to achieve any of the goals touted by the opposition party.

As per some reports, party’s secretary general Salman Akram Raja has tendered his resignation. Raja submitted his resignation to PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan, who has yet to formally accept it. Meanwhile, the chief of PTI’s ally party, Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), Sahibzada Hamid Raza has also resigned from his positions in PTI’s core and political committees. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Raza said that he has resigned to stay away from the party’s “internal conflicts”.

In response to these rising disagreements, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur called PTI’s core committee meeting at CM House. Attendees of the meeting reported that Gandapur and Bushra Bibi, wife of the former PTI chairman Imran Khan, are bitter over failure of sit-in.

They have reportedly turned on each other as the blame game over the protest failure intensifies, sources said, adding that Gandapur told Bushra, “We are the soldiers of Imran Khan only, no one else.”

Core Committee members also strongly criticized central leadership, and lashed out at the former president Arif Alvi for not expelling workers who did not perform as expected. Bushra Bibi defended the former President, which only fueled Gandapur’s anger further.

Shaukat Yousafzai’s statement regarding Bushra Bibi also discussed in the meeting, where he had said that Imran Khan and the PTI leadership had agreed for sit-in at Sangjani but Bushra refused. During the meeting, Bushra expressed displeasure over Yousafzai’s statement, which was met with support for Yousafzai from former Speaker Mushtaq Ghani.

The members of the core committee also raised concerns on why wasn’t it clearly decided earlier on who will lead the protestors.

CM Gandapur has called a meeting of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa parliamentary committee today. Members of the National Assembly from the province have also been invited to attend the meeting, sources said, adding that the chief minister will take the parliamentary party into confidence in the meeting today.

Bushra Bibi and party politics will also be discussed in the meeting.

Also read: PTI Secretary-General Salman Akram Raja steps down amid criticism