PTI leader Hammad Azhar on Thursday stepped down yet again as the president of the party’s Punjab chapter citing a lack of access to incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan.
Azhar had previously stepped down as the general secretary and acting president of the party’s Punjab chapter in March citing his legal tribulations and the obstacles they presented in performing his duties. However, the party had refused to accept the resignation from his offices and urged him to continue performing his duties.
He emerged on the scene after months and led a PTI motorcycle rally in Lahore on Wednesday despite being wanted by the police in connection with over 50 cases.
In a post on social media platform X today, Azhar said:
Elaborating on the issues that led to the decision, Azhar said: “Unfortunately I don’t have access to Imran Khan. I did not hold a press conference nor did any deal as my movement is very restricted and I cannot go to Adiala. Many such decisions were taken in the organisation of Punjab which neither included my opinion nor my consent. Most of these decisions were based on lobbying and limited access to Imran Khan and one-sided information instead of merit.”
He claimed that lobbying was underway since quite a while to replace PTI Lahore President Chaudhry Asghar and the effort had now succeeded.
Azhar praised Asghar for his performance in the past three months and for leading the party from the front.
“But his opponents began filling Khan sahib’s ears since the week after he was nominated as President. The party leadership also agrees with me that this decision and many such decisions are taken only as a result of limited access to Khan sahib.
“Apart from this, there are many other cases where there was clear injustice, wrong decisions were made and in some regions, our leaders are very worried but Khan sahib is not even informed.”
Azhar said it was not possible for him to violate merit during his presidency and denotify those people rendering services to the party only because they could not access Imran.
“I had already resigned for the same reason that it is not possible for anyone to run the affairs without access to the party chairman. In such cases, vested interests take advantage of this lack of communication. Major organisational responsibility should be vested only in those who have access to the party leader to convey the full message to the party chairman.
Lahaza I am leaving the charge of the Punjab Presidency from today. I was a worker of Imran Khan and will remain so.“
In a separate post, he said: “I am not interested in the party position nor was I before and before too I took this responsibility on your urging. I will continue to work for the party but without any position. I believe that in the current situation, this is the right path for me.”
Azhar also claimed that there were issues related to groups and communication in the party.
“Since I do not have contact with Khan sahib, I would like to deliver some messages to him. I am using social media out of necessity because sending messages is the root cause of real issues at this time.”
Azhar said there were three groups in the party with different interests and thoughts. “Get them all on one page and no one should be allowed to have a different strategy than your thinking. Anyone who has a different opinion than you should not even be allowed to go screen.”
He further claimed that two other groups in the party were bringing messages from different camps. “These people have become overly important and give you specific feedback about their favourites in the party and get you to utter statements of their liking,” Azhar added.
The PTI leader said the solution was simple and Imran should meet Omar Ayub and Shibli Faraz, the National Assembly and Senate opposition leaders, as much as possible.
He praised the two as “responsible and mature people and because of them the party persevered through a hard time but they don’t meet you as much as they should”.
Azhar said the issues were not so major that they could not be fixed, adding that access to Imran was being abused and it needed to be fixed otherwise it could be damaging.
