LAHORE, Dec 24: Former federal minister Khalid Ahmad Khan Kharal of the Pakistan People’s Party has decided to join Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, along with other PPP ticket-holders and office-bearers from Toba Tek Singh.

In a related development, PTI vice-chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi has approached the ‘angry’ couple belonging to the PPP --- Nahid Khan and Senator Safdar Abbasi --- and urged them to join the PTI.

Khalid Kharal, who is also secretary general of the PPP’s Federal Council, has disclosed that a number of PPP’s ‘important personalities’ from other parts of Punjab will soon join Imran Khan’s party.

“Mr Qureshi invited me and other PPP workers to join the PTI. After consulting people in my constituency, I have decided to quit the PPP and join the PTI,” Mr Kharal told Dawn by phone on Saturday.

He said not only him but a large number of PPP workers, including former MNA Ishfaq Chaudhry, nazims and naib nazims, would also announce their decision to join the PTI at a public meeting in Toba Tek Singh on Dec 28.

Mr Kharal, an information minister in the Benazir Bhutto’s second government during 1993-96, criticised the PPP leadership for its failure to provide any relief to the masses. “This is inefficient and corrupt government. It has no right to rule as people are suffering because of loadshedding and inflation.”

The former commissioner of Larkana, who remained in prison during the Ziaul Haq’s martial law regime, is also not happy with President Asif Ali Zardari, the co-chairman of PPP. He said the president had not bothered to call a meeting of the Federal Council over the past three years or so, which showed how serious he was about the party affairs.

A source in the PPP told Dawn that Mr Qureshi had contacted Benazir Bhutto’s political secretary Nahid Khan and her husband Safdar Abbasi tried to persuade them to join the PTI.

Mr Qureshi was of the opinion that the PTI would get a further boost if the couple joined Mr Khan’s party as they would work together on a single platform for the welfare of people.

When contacted, Mr Abbasi said: “Mr Qureshi is an old friend of mine and we often meet. Yes, Mr Qureshi asked us to consider joining the PTI, but we told him that we will continue our struggle for the rights of the people from our own (PPP) party’s platform.”

He said they had over 20 years of long association with Benazir Bhutto and would like to continue her political legacy. “The party is facing hard time because of its co-chairman’s leadership and it has deviated from its principles. The failure of the PPP government is not the failure of the PPP. We will continue our struggle for reforms in the party,” he added.

The defections in the face of growing popularity of the PTI have also perturbed the PPP which earlier was of the opinion that the Imran factor was a “good omen” for the party, especially in Punjab.

“We are sending a delegation to Mr Kharal to listen to his grievances,” PPP’s Punjab president Imtiaz Safdar Warraich said, adding that every worker of the party was important and it would not like to lose them.

However, he said those who thought they might not get the PPP tickets in the next elections because of an electoral alliance with the PML-Q, they were trying to secure tickets of other parties.