Former MQM Rabita Committee member Saif Yar Khan joins Pak Sarzameen Party

KARACHI: Numbers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) dissidents continued to mount on Saturday as another party member, Saif Yar Khan, joined hands with Mustafa Kamal’s Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP).

The announcement was made by Kamal at a press conference at Bagh-e-Jinnah, the venue where the PSP’s first rally is scheduled on April 24.

Yar Khan was former member of MQM’s Rabita (Central Coordination) Committee.

On Friday, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) MPA Syed Hafeezuddin also announced to join Pak Sarzameen Party, making him the first from the Imran Khan-led party to switch sides.

Last week, MQM provincial lawmakers Iftikhar Akbar Randhawa and Ashfaq Mangi joined the PSP along with dozens of members of the MQM social media and tanzeemi committee teams and zonal in-charges from the district Jacobabad, Thatta, Qamber, Kashmore, Kandhkot, and Sukkur.

Since the PSP burst onto Karachi’s political scene earlier this year, important workers and leaders of MQM who have switched over to Kamal and Qaimkhani’s side include Anis Advocate, Raza Haroon, MPA Dr Sagheer Ahmed, MPA Iftikhar Alam, Waseem Aftab, ex-senator Mohammad Ali Brohi, and MPA Bilquis Mukhtar.

Mukhtar, who became the first female MQM dissident after she announced her decision on April 6, was a member of the provincial assembly’s standing committees on minorities affairs, women development and social welfare. She was also a founding member of the MQM’s first coordination committee and among those who had reopened Nine-Zero after it was sealed by the authorities.

(Photo: Reuters/File)