News Review 24/05/2023

Imran Khan’s Party Begins to Splinter

This week things went from bad to worse for PTI chairman and former Prime Minster Imran Khan.

Since his controversial arrest and the violence that followed it, more than two dozen leaders from Imran Khan's Tehreek-e-lnsaf (PTI) have quit the party, who all blame the continuing government crackdown for the exodus. In the biggest setback for Khans party since the exodus began, Shireen Mazari left the PTI on Tuesday 23rd after the former human rights minister was detained several times since she was first arrested on May 12 over the deadly protests that followed Khan's arrest. “The constant release and arrest and the ordeal it put my daughter Imaan under and the impact it had on my health, too. Due to these reasons, I have decided I will quit active politics. And I want to add that from today onwards, I will not be a part of PTI or any other political party,” she said. As more politicians jumped ship, PTI chief Imran Khan tweeted: “We had all heard about forced marriages in Pakistan but for PTI a new phenomenon has emerged, forced divorces." Sameen Mohsin Ali, lecturer at the University of Birmingham in the UK, told Al Jazeera that political careers in Pakistan are usually built around “opportunistic and not ideological lines’. But their decision on when to stay and when to go is shaped not by party leanings, but by political logic or dynamics in their constituencies and their prospects for power. This is we see politicians switching towards the party with the best chance of winning national or provincial governments," she told Al Jazeera.

Indian Court Summons BBC to Court

The High Court in Delhi has issued a summons to the BBC in a defamation case over a documentary on the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, that questioned his leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The defamation suit says that the documentary India: The Modi Question, which aired earlier this year, cast a slur on India’s reputation and that of its judiciary and the prime minister. The summons came months after Indian tax officials inspected the BBC's offices in Delhi and Mumbai in February after an angry response by the Indian government to the documentary. The government called the documentary, which did not air in India, a biased "propaganda piece" and blocked sharing of any clips from it on social media in India.