Farooq Sattar dissolves MQM-P, announces fresh intra-party election

KARACHI: After the party’s Bahadurbad faction removed him from the party convenership, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Farooq Sattar on Sunday announced to dissolve the Rabita Committee (coordination committee), ARY News reported.

Addressing a general workers’ meeting at PIB Colony, he announced to conduct an intra-party elections to determine new party chief on Saturday here at the KMC Ground.

“Before the general elections take place, we will hold an intraparty elections,” he said.

Earlier, levelling a number of allegations, the coordination committee removed Farooq Sattar as party convener.

“With a heavy heart, we, the coordination committee members, announce to sack Farooq Sattar as convener. He is no more MQM-P convener. He is just a party worker now,” announced Deputy Convener MQM-P Kunwar Naveed Jamil in a press conference.

Farooq Sattar said he also had a “charge sheet” against the coordination committee members. He said they had set a record of violating the party constitution.

Read More: Coordination committee appoints Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui as new MQM-P convener

“Since February 5, they were repeatedly calling unconstitutional meetings. They also made serious violations of Pakistan’s election laws. They sent nobody a show-cause notice and removed anybody from the party as and when they wanted,” he said.

He said it was time to remove “feudal lords” from the party. If they had the bottle to make a new party, so make it, he added.

“I want to make MQM-P an ideological party of 1986. We will not go for a collision, but struggle pacifically,” he said.

The most recent episode of rift surfaced between two factions of the party over the issue of party tickets for the upcoming Senate elections, with the Bahadurabad group opposing Sattar’s nomination of Kamran Tessori over veteran party leaders.

Earlier, Farooq Sattar said the conspiracy had been exposed. His aides had established that it was not the matter of Senate elections but it was the issue of taking over the party, he added.

He termed the Rabita Committee decision tantamount to expelling all the party workers from the MQM-P.

“They did not remove me from the convenership of the party but they have ousted the party loyalists and party workers from the party,” he said.