PTI’s internal rift spills into the open as Naqvi quits, Gohar refuses the resignation, and three workers are held outside Adiala
ISLAMABAD: The cracks inside Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf widened into full view on Thursday, as the party’s additional secretary general Firdous Shamim Naqvi stepped down — only for party chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan to refuse the resignation. Outside Adiala jail, police detained three PTI workers who had arrived with leaders hoping to meet Imran Khan.
The resignation at the centre of it all has its roots in a disciplinary row. Two days earlier, Gohar had directed Naqvi to issue a show-cause notice to party senator Mashal Yousafzai over what he described as a breach of party discipline — public comments about the senior leadership for which, he said, she had already been warned once. Naqvi, announcing his decision, insisted it was not driven by any grievance or disagreement, and confirmed he had not yet issued the notice. Gohar, for his part, would not let him go: he called Naqvi a party man of some thirty years whose services mattered too much to lose, and, according to party sources, returned the resignation. Naqvi remains in office.
The friction has spilled onto WhatsApp too. Senator Yousafzai has quit the party’s groups “in the heat of the moment”, while Naqvi has not left any — a detail PTI leader Sheikh Waqas Akram offered as reason to hope the situation settles soon. A deeper fault line runs underneath: notifications issued by secretary general Salman Akram Raja cannot be accepted by the Election Commission of Pakistan, which has rejected PTI’s intra-party elections — a matter now before the Lahore High Court.
At Adiala, meanwhile, the day ended with arrests. Eleven people had arrived to meet Imran Khan, but the jail administration turned them away; police later detained Malik Haris Awan and two workers, Ali Raza and Umer Baig. Advocate Awais Younas Chaudhry, who was on the visitors’ list, told Dawn there was no case against Awan and that he had come under Islamabad High Court directions — but the police were not willing to release him.
