PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat sent a show-cause notice to fellow party leader Parvez Elahi on Monday and suspended his membership over his comments regarding the party’s possible merger with the PTI.

The show-cause notice, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, said Shujaat summoned an emergency meeting after taking note of Elahi’s remarks on Sunday night.

A day ago, Elahi addressed a possible merger of the PML-Q with the PTI and said his party’s decision would surface after their consultative meeting scheduled to be held on Monday (today) to thrash out the proposal.

At another point, Elahi was more candid in his response, saying his son Moonis Elahi also wanted both parties to merge and proceed in politics with a consensus. “Any such merger will strengthen the party,” Elahi had said.

The show-cause notice said that the meeting of senior PML-Q leaders took “strict notice” of Elahi’s comments.

“An explanation of your unconstitutional and illegal action has been sought,” the notice reads.

It said that the PML-Q, as a political party, has its own identity, vote bank, party discipline and manifesto — which were all violated by Elahi’s comments.

The notice said that a period of seven days was being given to Elahi to provide an explanation for his comments otherwise proceedings would be initiated against him under Articles 16 and 50 of the party constitution, adding that Elahi’s basic party membership was being suspended until the explanation was provided.

Show-cause notice to Moonis and others

A show-cause notice was also sent to Moonis, Hussain Elahi and Senator Kamil Ali Agha, saying that it was found they were joining another party with Parvez.

The notice said that their National Assembly seats and senatorship were a trust of the PML-Q with them and any such move of theirs to join another party would be unconstitutional.

It added that if any of them wanted to join another party then they should relinquish their positions and resign otherwise the PML-Q would have no other option than to approach the Election Commission of Pakistan to de-seat them.

The notice gave them a seven-day period to provide an explanation for themselves.

Differences in PML-Q ranks

Differences in the PML-Q ranks first appeared in March last year around the time of the no-confidence motion against former prime minister Imran Khan as Parvez and Moonis entered the PTI camp while Shujaat joined the then-opposition.

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The same split was witnessed in July’s Punjab chief minister election saga as Shujaat supported the candidature of PML-N’s Hamza Shehbaz instead of Parvez.

Amid a widening rift between the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, Shujaat had extended an olive branch in August to Parvez, asking him to put an end to differences.

The PML-Q leader had talked in detail about the reasons that led to discord between him and Parvez. He, however, had called for the reunion of the party that split into two camps following the rift over the election of the Punjab CM.