Sikandar Hayat rejoins MC, asks others to follow his move

Veteran Kashmiri leader Sardar Sikandar Hayat on Friday rejoined his previous Muslim Conference (MC) party after ending his fluid association with the ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) after more than a decade.

Hayat announced his decision at his Nakyal residence in district Kotli in the presence of an MC delegation led by former Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) premier Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan.

On this occasion, he was accompanied by his younger brother and PML-N divisional president Sardar Naeem Khan and a local PML-N office bearer but not by his son Sardar Farooq Sikandar, a minister in Raja Farooq Haider led government. 

Hayat, who was twice elected as AJK prime minister and once as AJK president for full terms at the head of MC governments, was among the pioneers of the PML-N in AJK. 

According to PML-N sources, he had made several requests to Nawaz Sharif personally and through Raja Zafarul Haq for the party's launch in AJK. In 2016, he was appointed as PML-N’s central vice president against the AJK quota. However, for the past three years he had been intermittently going public with his reservations about the party and its government, alleging that PM Haider was not consulting him in any matter.

After the change of government in Pakistan, Hayat had also made an allegedly harsh comment about Sharif in addition to calling on Prime Minister Imran Khan along with PTI regional president Barrister Sultan Mahmood, following which his name was taken off from the party’s website. 

Given his mercurial temperament, political pundits were predicting for quite some time that he would hardly continue his association with the PML-N and would instead switch over to either the PTI or his previous party.

On Friday he brought the speculations to an end at a meeting with the MC delegation.  

“If slavery [of Pakistani political parties] is right then what was the point to oppose Maharaja Hari Singh who was a far better administrator,” Hayat remarked on the occasion, referring to the last dynast of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. 

He urged the AJK people to join MC for "it had been working with missionary zeal for the identity and integrity of Kashmiris."

While repeatedly urging local reporters present on the occasion not to pose any questions, Sardar Attique announced that Hayat would “patronize” the MC as its supreme head - a position he said had been lying vacant since the death of his father Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan. 

Later, on being asked by some reporters, Sardar Naeem maintained that they were unable to hold consultation with Farooq Sikandar on this decision due to his official engagements in Muzaffarabad “but would take him on board soon.”

A source close to PM Haider however claimed that Farooq Sikandar had disassociated himself from his father’s decision. 

“He has told the prime minister that he will not quit the party,” said the source of Hayat's elder son who had switched off his cellular phone since afternoon.

Though some PML-N leaders tried to downplay Hayat’s decision in their social media posts by saying that it would not make any difference to the party, senior minister Chaudhry Tariq Farooq had however a different view. 

“He (Hayat) is one of the leading figures of the state, both politically and socially, and his departure will definitely affect the party,” he said.

"We tried our best to remove his reservations but to no avail," he added, while talking to this scribe. 

Responding to a query by this scribe, Sardar Attique maintained that since Hayat's efforts were central to the establishment and subsequent progression of the PML-N in AJK, his exit was bound to cause a detrimental effect on the ruling party's support base. 

"The politics in our region revolves around personalities and it remains a fact that Sardar Sikandar Hayat had been the most towering personality in PML-N... His return to his ancestral party will give a clear direction to the disorientated workers at a time when breakage is quite visible," he said.

"I am sure his inclusion will work wonders for the MC in general elections." 

Tariq Naqash