The recently constituted ‘organising committee’ of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) chapter of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) held its maiden meeting on Monday in Islamabad but instead of making it to the get-together, party’s disgruntled former regional president Raja Farooq Haider preferred to be greeted by hundreds of his supporters at Kohala enroute to Muzaffarabad.
The 15-member organising committee, with former secretary general Shah Ghulam Qadir as its head, was constituted by PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif on Dec 10 after dissolving AJK chapter’s entire organisational setup, including overseas bodies.
Haider was among the remaining members who included Chaudhry Tariq Farooq, Chaudhry Muhammad Saeed, Raja Naseer Ahmed Khan, Mushtaq Minhas, Chaudhry Muhammad Aziz, Dr Najeeb Naqi, Ms Noreen Arif, Barrister Iftikhar Ali Gillani, Dr Mustafa Bashir, Raja Muhammad Siddique, Syed Shaukat Shah, Sardar Abdul Khaliq Wasi and Zulfiqar Ali Malik.
The Monday’s meet at the Bani Gala residence of Qadir was attended by all of them, except Haider who had returned from a long USA and UK tour on Dec 16.
Instead, he drove from Islamabad to Muzaffarabad and was received by a large number of his supporters at Kohala Bridge. However, while speaking to them, he did not make any direct reference to the committee's meeting but did make a claim that Nawaz Sharif had asked him to "stay in the committee and supervise the task assigned to it.”
On the other hand, Qadir said he did not know as to why Haider had not turned up at the meeting, even though he had fixed Dec 20 in keeping with his and another committee member's travel dates.
He informed that the meeting held in in very cordial atmosphere had renewed allegiance to the narrative of Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif apart from reposing full faith in their leadership.
According to him, it had been resolved that membership drive and reorganisation from the ward to polling station level followed by the union councils and constituencies would be simultaneously initiated within a week.
Apart from that, he said, it had also been decided to ascertain names of party activists who had violated party discipline during the recent general elections for disciplinary action against them. Recommendations would be sent to the central secretariat for revocation of the basic membership of those who had contested elections against party candidates, he added.
Qadir said the meeting had taken strong exception to the PTI government’s “vindictive actions” in AJK and all workers had been asked to submit details/proof in this regard.
He said the meeting had also strongly condemned “non-inclusion of Kashmir issue in the agenda of OIC foreign ministers’ conference in Islamabad” as well as the lack of any “substantial move” by Imran Khan in support of suffering Kashmiris after India’s Aug 5, 2019 move.
In his speech at Kohala, Haider claimed that he had declined to be part of the organising committee during his last meeting with Nawaz Sharif in London but he did not agree.
“Mian sahib asked me if I acknowledge him as 'head' and I responded you are not only the head but our leader. On this, he stressed that I [Haider] have to be part of the committee and supervise the task of reorganisation,” he claimed.
He urged PML-N workers, particularly those active on social media, to not to issue any confrontational statements and instead maintain unity in their ranks.
Tariq Naqash
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