ISLAMABAD: Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan leader Farooq Sattar has challenged the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) jurisdiction to hear a petition pertaining to the party’s convenership.
In a petition filed by his counsel Babar Sattar, Sattar has stated that the party’s internal matters cannot be heard by the ECP, seeking dismissal of the Bahadurabad group’s petition over the party convenership.
“MQM-P belongs to the party’s workers and only they will protect it,” he told journalists outside the ECP premises. “They [party workers] have announced their verdict in the intra-party elections. I have chosen the constitutional process of holding intra-party elections and getting mandate from the party. I have proposed a formula if we want to sit down and solve matters through negotiation but it was Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui who approached the ECP to challenge my constitutional position,” he said, stressing that the party’s constitution contained clauses to solve the conflict on the party’s convenership.
Meanwhile, Bahadurabad faction’s Siddiqui said that the issue was concerned with principles and not the convenership of the party.
A large number of party workers, including MNAs and MPAs, gathered outside the ECP headquarter on Thursday as the hearing went underway. Security personnel had to shut down the building’s gates to prevent members of the party from entering the premises.
The infighting between MQM-P leaders over nominations for the upcoming Senate elections had earlier resulted in the emergence of splinter groups – Dr Farooq Sattar is leading PIB Colony faction and the Bahadurabad group includes Amir Khan, Nasreen Jalil, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui and others.
Published in Daily Times, March 2nd 2018.
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