PAT to fully participate in local bodies polls: Khurram Nawaz Gandapur

LAHORE: Allama Tahirul Qadri-led Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) will fully participate in the local bodies polls, confirmed the party’s secretary general – Khurram Nawaz Gandapur – while speaking to Bol News.

He said that he directed the party organisers across the province to make preparations in this regard.  “We will not leave any seat vacant in the local bodies polls across the province,” Gandapur said while adding that no other party has more well-educated and dedicated public representatives than the Awami Tehreek.

For Gandapur after the approval of the Local Bodies Ordinance, elections are on cards. “Elections should be held without delay,” the PAT secretary general said.

He said that these institutions have suffered a lot in the past due to party-based local body elections. As the governments in the provinces and the center change, the local body representatives of the opposition party are not accepted and the institutions are practically suspended.

He maintained that political interference in the local bodies system should be stopped.

Gandapur was of the opinion that ever since education and local bodies became provincial subjects there has been a loss all across.

“Local body elections should be held on time just like general elections,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, acclaimed defence analyst, Lt General (retd) Ghulam Mustafa told Bol News that PAT has lost its political ground to Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP). The TLP got itself recognised as a political force in the last general elections of 2018 as in Sindh it has three MPAs.

Mustafa said that the school of thought which they are representing is the largest in the country, and previously the leadership of this school of thought was restricted to mosques only. “But with the rise of the TLP they have also jumped into the political arena,” he said.

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Mustafa maintained that PAT Chief Allama Tahirul Qadri was previously representing this [Barelvi] school of thought in the public and political arenas, but with the changing times the TLP has a bigger mandate than Qadri’s Awami Tehreek.

In Punjab, the devotees and followers of Allama Qadri were vocal about the Model Town massacre, and they are likely to find an expression with the TLP stance as they are from the same school of thought with similar beliefs, the defence analyst added.

Agreeing with Mustafa, the sources privy to developments have told Bol News that after seeing the rise of TLP in mainstream politics, the PAT is also making an all-out effort to gain its lost ground.