Khawaja Hoti to quit ANP, join PTI

PESHAWAR - The disgruntled MNA of ANP and former federal minister, Khawaja Mohammad Khan Hoti, and ex-federal minister and veteran politician presently associated with PML (Likeminded) Nisar Mohammad Khan will formally join Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on December 16 and 12 respectively. Talking to TheNation on Monday, Zahid Hussain, provincial leader of the PTI, confirmed that Khawaja Hoti and Nisar Mohammad Khan were going to join the party on December 16 and 12 respectively. PTIs Chairman Imran Khan will also attend the public meetings at Mardan and Charsadda where these two politicians would announce joining the party. Formally coming into politics in 1979 as a local member of Mardan municipality, Khwaja Hoti has been provincial minister for tourism in 1989, and later became provincial minister for education from 1993 to 1996. Later, he became president of PPP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 1999. However, due to differences with top brass of PPP, he left the PPPs provincial presidentship in 2004. Likewise, he joined the ANP in 2006 and contested National assembly election in February 2008 from NA-9, Mardan-I, on ANPs ticket and still he is an MNA. But once again due to differences with the partys policies, Hoti is going to join the PTI. Another ex-federal minister Nisar Mohammad Khan, who is presently associated with PML (Likeminded), will also join the PTI on December 12, Zahid Hussain said, adding that Nisar would be hosting Imran Khan in his village Gulabad in Charsadda district, where he would formally announce joining the PTI. He served as a federal minister and also had been a senator in the past. Zahid also said that PTI Chairman Imran Khan would address a public meeting in Peshawar on November 25 where the PPP former provincial lawmaker Iftikhar Khan Jaghra would formally announce joining the PTI. To make this gathering a successful one, various committees have been formed and it was expected that hundreds of thousands of partys workers would attend it. Moreover, Ghaffar Mohmand, the former managing director of the PTDC and brother of Iftikhar Mohmand, former provincial minister, would also join the PTI during a public meeting at Takhtbhai on December 17. Not only this, another former provincial legislature Faisal Zaman Jehazo Wala, who has been MPA in the past, will also joint the party on December 11. Zahid said that besides a number of prominent and active politicians from Swat and Dir districts would also announce joining the PTI unconditionally. He said that they had great expectations that party would emerge a big political force in the coming elections by winning majority of the seats in both national and provincial assemblies. He informed that central and provincial leadership of the party would visit Swat and Dir districts soon after Muharram-ul-Haram. He said that people had eyed on the PTI for pulling the country out of prevailing crises, he concluded.

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