PESHAWAR: With the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) announcing partying ways with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) claims that the former was never a coalition partner of the government.

Confusion prevailed over the status of BAP’s KP chapter — having four MPAs in the 145-member KP Assembly — as it was not cleared whether the party belonged to the treasury or the opposition group.

The issue emerged after Bilawal Afridi, the parliamentary leader of BAP in the KP Assembly, released a video message announcing that his party had parted ways with the ruling PTI because of “unfulfilled commitments”.

Confirming the development on Wednesday, Mr Afridi said that in the coming days his party would take decisions that would benefit the people of their constituencies and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Ruling PTI says the party was never part of coalition set-up

He alleged that the government had failed to fulfil the promises of releasing Rs110 billion funds under the National Finance Commission Award for the districts merged with KP and giving jobs to the people in tribal areas.

“We are not involved in any discussion when meetings are held on newly merged districts and funds utilisation has been happening on the instructions of two to three people. No [assembly] members from tribal districts are taken on board in any meetings and this is unfair,” Mr Afridi said.

For these reasons, he added, BAP lawmakers in the KP Assembly were breaking ranks with the government.

BAP had never been in the KP Assembly and it first emerged when elections were held in the erstwhile Fata in 2019 after which three independent members announced joining BAP and on their strength a female was elected on a reserve seat.

PTI chief whip in the KP Assembly and provincial Minister for Labour Shaukat Yousafzai, while talking to Dawn, wondered how BAP could part ways with provincial government when it was never its part. He said the status of BAP in the provincial assembly was not clear as sometime they supported the treasury and sometime the opposition.

BAP was never invited to any parliamentary party meeting of the PTI, nor had it attended any meeting chaired by Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, he said, adding that the PTI had 94 lawmakers in the 145-member house and it didn’t require support of any other party.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2022