LAHORE: Parliamentarians of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) from Punjab sat together on Wednesday to weigh in on a strategy for demanding resignations of Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Law Minister Rana Sanaullah in the wake of Model Town inquiry report, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Both the ministers were not exonerated in the Justice Baqir Najafi commission report that was made public by the Punjab government following the orders of the Lahore High Court (LHC).
According to details, different options came under discussion during the PTI lawmakers’ meeting held under the chair of opposition leader Mian Mehmoodur Rasheed in the Punjab Assembly and it was decided that other parties of opposition would be contacted as well to move a joint resolution seeking resignations of Rana Sanaullah and Shehbaz Sharif.
The opposition is also thinking of moving a no-confidence motion against the chief minister as according to them it is now evident in the Baqir Najafi report that both Rana Sanaullah and Shehbaz were to be held responsible for the Model Town incident that saw 14 people dead and over a hundred innocent citizens injured.
Later on, speaking to the media, the opposition leader said that he will take up the matter of the resignations in the upcoming session of the Punjab Assembly as both were responsible for the Model Town incident while Rana Sanaullah was the mastermind of the massacre.
“The affidavit submitted by Shehbaz in the Baqir Najafi commission reveals that the situation got worse after the CM passed directives to police to stop the Model Town operation and 14 people were killed that day. The CM lost the morality to rule the province that very day when innocent citizens were killed in broad daylight,” said Mian Mehmood ur Rasheed.
He further added that he had raised the issue on the floor of the house the day police started a crackdown at the Minhaj-ul-Quran secretariat and asked the government to stop the operation but Rana Sanaullah refuted his claims by saying that proclaimed offenders and terrorists were taking shelter at Minhaj-ul-Quran and that the government could not allow ‘a state within the state’.
The opposition leader demanded a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) be constituted by the Supreme Court (SC) to further investigate the Model Town incident while saying that a monitoring judge must be deputed to overview the proceedings of this JIT.
Meanwhile, talking to Pakistan Today, PTI MPA Saadia Sohail Rana, who was present during the meeting, said that they have requested the speaker to call the assembly session immediately as the opposition wants to discuss the Model Town inquiry report in the house or they would stage a sit-in at the assembly stairs if they found out that the government is trying to avoid the assembly session.
“Our parliamentary party held a meeting today and another meeting is also scheduled this week in which all the lawmakers would be present. We have contacted other opposition parties as well,” she said.
Furthermore, PPP MPA Faiza Malik told Pakistan Today that PPP and PTI are partners as far as the matters of Punjab assembly are concerned and they would definitely push for moving a joint resolution demanding the resignations of Rana Sanaullah and Shehbaz Sharif.
It is pertinent to mention here that although the opposition has a thin representation in the Punjab Assembly with only 53 seats in the house of 371, it is most likely that several ruling party parliamentarians may support the no-confidence motion against Shehbaz Sharif if the opposition moves it during the next session keeping in view the neglected behavior of the ruling party towards most of the MPAs.
There are several disgruntled MPAs of PML-N who have reservations against their own party in the Punjab assembly including Maulana Rehmatullah from Jhang (PP-74), Malik Waris Kallu from Khushab (PP- 42), Muhammad Khan from Jhang (PP-81), Sahibzada Ghulam Nizamud Din Sialvi from Sargodha (PP-37), Chaudhry Abdul Razzaq Dhillon from Sargodha (PP-33) and Rana Munawar Ghous from Sargodha (PP-36), all of whom have tendered their resignations to a spiritual leader of Sargodha over the recent issue of Khatm-e-Nabuwat.
Meanwhile, the resolutions were submitted in the Punjab assembly seeking the resignation of both Rana Sanaullah and Shehbaz Sharif.
Dr Murad Ras submitted his resolution demanding a resignation from Rana Sanaullah while Nabila Hakim Ali, a PTI lawmaker has separately submitted her resolution seeking the resignation of CM Shehbaz Sharif in the wake of the Baqir Najafi report.
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