ISLAMABAD:
PTI MNA Junaid Akbar has announced his resignation as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) following the instructions of party founder Imran Khan.
“When Khan says end it, for me the matter is finished,” Akbar said in a statement on Friday.
Akbar said he never sought positions for personal benefit, valued his self-respect over titles, and would neither bow to generals nor act out of greed. Refusing to engage in “boot-polishing” for anyone, he said he lacked the resources to run media campaigns unlike others.
He decried his comparison with former PAC chairman Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. Nisar, he said, enjoyed support from the establishment against the PPP government, which allowed sensitive reports to leak to the media.
“During the current government, reports like Toshakhana were deliberately withheld from the press and journalists privately admitted they were pressured not to air details during Imran Khan’s case,” he said.
Meanwhile, the PTI also formally announced a boycott of the Punjab by-elections.
The party instructed its candidates to withdraw nomination papers immediately, reiterating that it would not contest under any circumstances.
It also distanced the party from individuals who filed nominations under its name, stressing that it had no connection with them. The party urged its workers and office-bearers to strictly follow the boycott decision and stated that it remained focused on continuing its political and public struggle instead.
Former PM Imran Khan on August 26 instructed party members to resign from all parliamentary committees., his sister Aleema Khan told journalists outside Adiala jail after meeting her brother.
She said the PTI founder also issued directives to PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar and General Secretary Salman Akram Raja regarding the upcoming by-elections. “He [Imran] said contesting the by-elections would only give legal justification to those polls,” she added.
