By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf faces a deepening internal rebellion in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where more than 30 members of the provincial assembly have coalesced into a dissident bloc demanding aggressive action to secure the release of the party’s imprisoned founder, Imran Khan — and threatening to bring down the provincial government’s budget if their demands are not met.
The emergence of the group has rattled senior party figures, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati, who has repeatedly delayed convening the assembly, apparently wary of providing a floor from which the rebels could publicly embarrass Chief Minister Sohail Afridi and the broader PTI leadership, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The assembly last met on May 18, when the speaker adjourned proceedings until June 1. That session never took place. The speaker then rescheduled for June 8. That date, too, passed without a sitting. The assembly secretariat has now issued a notification that the house will convene on June 15.
When asked about the delays, Swati told Dawn newspaper that the session would not be held until after the federal government presents its budget in the National Assembly. Critics noted the explanation carried an air of contrivance: the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly has itself been in session for much of the past two months.
The unrest crystallised shortly after a new wave of ministers, advisers and special assistants were sworn into the provincial cabinet on May 22. Several lawmakers who were passed over for inclusion found themselves aggrieved, and what began as quiet discontent has grown, according to one dissident lawmaker, from roughly 25 members to more than 30 in the span of a few days.
“The four or five dissident lawmakers who can tolerate pressure are already known to everyone,” said the lawmaker, who declined to be identified, citing fear of retaliation from party leaders and the chief minister’s office.
The true scope of the fracture became visible on June 1, when Chief Minister Afridi convened a parliamentary party meeting, and only 57 of the party’s 92 assembly members showed up. Those who attended used the occasion to confront Afridi directly, raising complaints about corruption in government departments, deteriorating law and order across the province and what they described as the indifference of the police, district administration and bureaucracy toward constituents’ concerns.
The following day, a contingent of dissidents wrote to interim PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, voicing alarm over what they characterised as insufficient effort by the party leadership to work toward Imran Khan’s release from Adiala Jail, where he has been held on a series of criminal charges that his supporters describe as politically motivated.
A One-Point Agenda
Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, a member of the provincial assembly and one of the more publicly vocal members of the dissident faction, cast the group’s purpose in unambiguous terms. “We don’t need any incentives,” he said. “Our one-point agenda is the decisive movement for the release of Imran Khan.”
Ghani said the group’s demands extend beyond a general call for Khan’s freedom. They want the chief minister to arrange meetings between party leaders and family members and the imprisoned founder, provide him access to medical care from physicians of his own choosing at Shifa International Hospital, and accelerate the legal proceedings in his various cases.
Ghani also signalled dissatisfaction with what he called the ineffectiveness of sporadic protest demonstrations outside Adiala Jail, arguing that nothing short of a sustained, permanent sit-in continuing until concrete results are achieved would serve the moment.
He said the group had made its position clear to Afridi: if the chief minister proceeds to stage a sit-in outside the National Assembly on June 10, more than 30 of their members will not leave until demands are met. More pointedly, Ghani warned that if the government attempts to present the provincial budget without Afridi first meeting directly with Imran Khan, the dissidents will boycott the budget session and withhold the support needed to pass it — a threat with direct consequences for the government’s legislative agenda.
At a meeting with Speaker Swati, Ghani said he took care to frame the group’s stance in terms of political principles rather than personal grievance. “We are not a dissident group,” he told the speaker. “We want a clear-cut announcement by the chief minister on his plans for Imran Khan’s release.” He reiterated that position publicly after the meeting, saying the group holds no vendetta against Afridi or any other government figure. “We firmly stand with PTI founding chairman Imran Khan.”
Maneuvering Behind the Scenes
The speaker’s visit to Ghani in Mansehra over the weekend underscored how seriously party leadership is treating the rebellion. One member of the group with knowledge of the discussions said Swati offered Ghani the position of senior provincial minister in the cabinet — an account that, if accurate, would suggest the party has already moved from dismissal to accommodation. Ghani, by his own account, declined.
A separate dissident legislator, speaking anonymously, said Chief Minister Afridi has also been quietly working the phones and leveraging development funding, attempting to bring wavering members back into line by including their constituency projects in the Annual Development Program.
Whether former chief minister Ali Amin Gandapur — himself a figure of considerable political turbulence — is playing a behind-the-scenes role in organising the rebellion remains a subject of speculation. Ghani flatly denied it, insisting that no single individual is leading the group and that the lawmakers have come together purely around a common cause.
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