The government on Wednesday cancelled its consultative meeting scheduled for March 28 to discuss National Action Plan due to the absence of important political leaders of the opposition, sources said.
Sources stated that Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had written letters to opposition members upon special orders of Prime Minister Imran Khan to summon them in the important meeting session.
However, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif excused from appearing in the meeting which led to its cancellation.
It is to be noted that it was solely the opposition member who demanded to call the meeting.
Although there was no mention of military courts in the foreign minister’s letters to opposition leaders, a number of opposition members believe the main purpose of the activity was to seek their consent for their extension. The two-year term of the courts is set to expire soon.
The main opposition parties had been contemplating a boycott of the planned briefing due to prevailing tensions with the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf.
A source in the PPP earlier said that after the “brutal police action” against party workers gathered outside the Islamabad NAB office to show support for Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, it had become difficult for the leadership to sit with government functionaries at any forum.
Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif had urged the government to brief the whole parliament instead of convening a meeting of “selected leaders”, while the JUI-F chief had announced that his party had previously rejected NAP and therefore would not attend the scheduled briefing.
Sources in the PTI said the government had decided to engage opposition parties over the issue as it did not have the required two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament to get the constitutional amendment bill passed for this purpose.