Ilyas was elected as new Leader of the House in April this year, replacing Sardar Abdul Qayyum Niazi - the first pick of Imran Khan after his PTI party had clinched a clear victory in July last year's AJK polls.
However, for quite some time the AJK capital has again been abuzz with speculations that another no-confidence motion is on the cards. The speculations had borrowed credence after Speaker Chaudhry Anwarul Haq’s strained relations with Ilyas and his alleged secret meetings with some opposition leaders for their support to his candidature for the coveted office or vice versa.
Haq, who was initially a strong proponent of Ilyas’ nomination for the AJK premiership, has been at loggerheads with him for the past few months in protest against what he believes the latter’s “extraordinary leanings” towards President Barrister Sultan Mahmood.
He was particularly angry at preference to Mahmood in matters related to Mirpur division, mainly the postings and transfers of senior officials, sources in the PTI said. Haq and Mahmood both come from Mirpur division’s Bhimber and Mirpur districts, respectively. Apart from being the speaker, of late Haq has also assumed the office of AJK Public Accounts Committee Chairman.
Interestingly, Haq had already been at daggers drawn with Mahmood, something he has never tried to conceal. At one of his public meetings during the last year’s election campaign he had berated Mahmood, then PTI’s regional president, for “supporting his rival Chaudhry Tariq Farooq from the then ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).”
Haq won his first election in 2006 with the support of Mahmood and Raja Zulqarnain, a powerful landlord and political figure of Bhimber who rose to the office of AJK president the same year. Zulqarnain has been supporting Haq ever since.
At least three important cabinet members, who spoke to this scribe on condition of anonymity, asserted that Haq “wanted his choice in transfers and postings of civil servants in Mirpur division implemented without an iota of dissent.”
“As far as the affairs of the Speaker's Bhimber district are concerned, his choice has always been given preference by the prime minister but he wants that he should be given equal importance in postings of divisional officers alongside the president,” one of them said.
Another minister recalled that during the recent sessions of Assembly, Haq did not camouflage his resentment towards the government following which PM Ilyas had constituted a four-member ministerial committee to address his "genuine concerns and grievances."
“Nevertheless, the tone and tenor of the speaker suggests that he has come to a point of no return,” he said, lamenting that the “tug of war” within the PTI was making a mockery of the party particularly when it had already changed its parliamentary leader [in AJK] in less than a year.
Political observer Naila Altaf Kayani maintained that Ilyas was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea because he had to face pressures from both the president and speaker to prefer their respective choices in many matters.
“Notwithstanding Haq’s support to him, the prime minister cannot afford to offend President Mahmood in a wanton manner because two members of the president family - son Yasir Sultan and brother-in-law Chaudhry Arshad - are also part of the cabinet,” she said.
Sources close to Ilyas confided to this scribe that on Friday night Ilyas had discussed in detail the prevailing situation with Aamer Mehmood Kiani, PTI’s additional secretary general, in the context of the rumours about no trust against him and both had “resolved to cut the conspirators down to size.”
As Kiani was reported to have passed on the crux of discussion to Khan, the latter had “not only expressed his trust in Ilyas but had also assured him that any conspiracy to destabilize his government would not be tolerated,” these sources claimed.
In pictures, Ilyas was seen whispering in Khan's ears while sharing stage with him at PTI's power show in Jhelum on Saturday night.
Sources close to Haq confirmed that the ministerial team had met Haq on Saturday with an offer to sit with the PM to sort out differences. However, he did not budge from his stance.
However, what had intensified Haq’s anger was prime minister’s invitation to former president Zulqarnain to see him at his private residence in Islamabad on Sunday. Later in the afternoon, Ilyas was also visited by Mahmood at his residence and both leaders were seen tittering in a relaxed mood in the officially released pictures.
According to sources, Haq had remarked in front of some people that Ilyas had crossed the red line by meddling in his constituency.
The ministers who spoke to this scribe emphatically said that hardly any PTI lawmaker could go against the decision of Khan in the prevailing situation “particularly when everyone has seen for himself how the people have treated the turncoats” in Pakistan.
“At a time when the party is confronting vindictive measures of the imported regime on the one hand and reaching out to the masses for a real change in the country on the other, chairman Khan can hardly consider swapping the parliamentary leader [in AJK],” asserted one of them.
When contacted by this scribe on phone after several attempts for his version, Haq declined to take up any question on this issue.
This scribe also made calls to PTI senior vice president Fawad Chaudhry, secretary general Asad Umar and additional secretary general Kiani to ascertain their viewpoint on the situation in their party’s AJK chapter, but while the cell phones of Chaudhry and Kiani were switched off, Umar did not attend call or respond to the text message.
Tariq Naqash
