Farooq out, IHC reinstates Khalid as MQM-P convener

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday upheld Election Commission of Pakistan's (ECP) ruling to remove Dr Farooq Sattar as convener of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and declared Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui as party convener. The MQM-P had moved the top electoral watchdog against Sattar in wake of intra-party fissures over award of party tickets in the recently-concluded Senate elections. The erstwhile MQM-P convener had then challenged the verdict before the court.
In the petition, Sattar said he had been 'illegally' removed as party head on February 11 by MQM-P central coordination committee (CCC). "The said illegal removal was confirmed by the ECP in its March 26 order," the petition read. On March 29, the high court temporarily suspended the ECP's decision after Sattar's counsel Babar argued that the Commission has no jurisdiction over internal party matters.
The IHC had in April reserved its verdict after Sattar's counsel and the respondents concluded their arguments. The court had initially restored Sattar by suspending the ECP order till it decided the matter. However, IHC Justice Aamer Farooq dismissed Sattar's petition, enabling Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui to head the party. Counsels of both Sattar and Siddiqui were not present in the court when Justice Farooq announced the decision.
A five-member bench, headed by Chief Election Commissioner Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza, had subsequently annulled the intra-party elections held under Dr Sattar's leadership, which he claimed to have won with a huge margin.
The ECP had also accepted a petition against a resolution passed at an "emergency general workers' meeting" called by Dr Sattar last month. At the convention, when Sattar had asked the participants through a resolution if they would endorse the Coordination Committee's decision to remove him from the position of convener, the workers had replied in negative.
Following the ECP's judgment, Dr Sattar had told media that decision would be remembered as a 'dark verdict.'
He had termed the judgment "illegal and unconstitutional" and said the Commission had never issued judgments on intra-party disputes in the past.
"I have been punished for standing against MQM founder Altaf Hussain on August 23 [2016] and for standing alongside Pakistan, the Constitution and the Pakistani state," Dr Sattar had said, referring to the day when he announced parting ways with Hussain over his incendiary speech.
Rifts in the MQM-P had emerged on February 5 over the distribution of party tickets to the candidates for the March 3 Senate elections. The party split in two groups - one led by Sattar and the other by senior leader Amir Khan - and both sides took extreme actions against each other.
The Bahadurabad group ousted Sattar from the post of convener with a two-third majority and, in a tit-for-tat reaction, Sattar held a workers' convention the same day, dissolved the Coordination Committee and announced intra-party elections.
On February 18, Farooq was elected party convener after securing over 9,000 votes in intra-party elections.