Jehangir Khan Tareen has had a ripple effect in the Punjab’s power game, where Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) Hamza Shahbaz and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid’s (PML-Q) Chaudhry Parvez Elahi are in the race for Punjab chief minister’s slot.

The Tareen group emerged last year when some of PTI’s members of National Assembly and Punjab Assembly came together to register their protest to Prime Minister Imran Khan over being neglected by him and Chief Minister Usman Buzdar. Rather than seeing Tareen personally, Khan met Saeed Akbar Niwani to appease the group. However, grievances remained. When the opposition moved no-confidence resolutions in the National and Punjab Assemblies, the Tareen group became important.

Tareen has left the country and has been receiving medical treatment in the UK. Several government and opposition leaders have reached out to him to enlist his support. After Imran Khan asked Sardar Buzdar to resign, and nominated Chaudhry Parvez Elahi as candidate for Punjab chief minister, the latter’s son, Moonis Elahi, a federal minister in Khan’s cabinet, visited UK to ask Tareen for his support. He returned unsuccessful.

Tareen and Elahi were once part of Gen Pervez Musharraf’s core team, and members of the same party, the PML-Q. In 2002, he served as an adviser to the then chief minister Elahi before he became a federal minister. Tareen joined the PTI in 2011 and was appointed as the party’s secretary general.

Before 2002, he had not wanted to be a career politician. His close relative, Makhdoom Ahmed Mehmood, the former Punjab governor, was the person who brought him to the political arena. Soon after joining the PTI, his differences with Shah Mehmood Qureshi surfaced. Sources close to him say that they fell out because the PM’s spouse did not like him. They say the registration of references against him and his children drove the final wedge in the relations.

Tareen is firm in his stance against supporting the PTI or its allies. Hamza’s show of power on Wednesday night indicated that he has 22 members in his group, making it the third biggest voting bloc in the provincial assembly after the PTI and the PML-N. His group’s support will therefore be decisive in the election for the chief minister.

— Mubasher Bukhari

The writer is a senior journalist, teacher of journalism, and analyst. He tweets at @BukhariMubasher