Imran Khan, the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), wrote a letter on February 14 to President Arif Alvi requesting that he launch an inquiry against the former chief of army staff General (ret.) Qamar Javed Bajwa. Imran Khan claims that Bajwa consistently violated his oath of office “Some very disturbing information has now come into the public domain whereby it is clear that General Bajwa violated his oath of the office repeatedly,” the letter reads.
The following points are mentioned in the letter:
- Bajwa had concluded that Imran Khan would be dangerous to the nation if he remained in office, which, according to Imran Khan, is a clear violation of Bajwa’s oath. According to the letter, Gen. Bajwa had “admitted to journalist Javed Chaudhry that ‘we’ considered Imran Khan [to be] dangerous to the country if he continued to stay in power.”
- Bajwa was successful in having a National Accountability Bureau case against Shaukat Tarin quashed, demonstrating his dominance over the NAB. According to Imran Khan, the NAB was under the former army chief’s “control,” which was “yet another clear violation of the Constitutional oath because the army itself is a department under the Ministry of Defense and civilian official autonomous institutions (NAB) do not come [under] military control.”
- Bajwa claimed to have tapes of Imran Khan’s conversations with him when he was the prime minister of Pakistan. The PTI chairman described it as a “serious violation” of both the former army chief’s oath and his own fundamental human rights. “The question is why and under what authority was Gen. Bajwa recording confidential conversations?” he asked.
- Bajwa openly defied the previous administration’s stance of remaining neutral during the Russia-Ukraine War. He “publicly went against the then government’s policy of maintaining neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war,” according to Imran Khan. The former prime minister asserted that Gen. Bajwa did this on April 2, 2022, during the Islamabad Security Conference.
Javed Chaudhry detailed his meeting with the former army chief in his Daily Express columns a week before the letter was written. A few days later, television presenter Aftab Iqbal disclosed in his vlog that General Bajwa had informed him that he had recordings of talks with Imran Khan in which the PTI leader used to commend Bajwa for targeting Nawaz Sharif.
Read more: Imran Khan pens letter to CJP over audio leaks
After listing out the violations that were made by the former COAS Bajwa, as admitted in his interactions with journalists Javed Chaudhry and Aftab Iqbal, Imran Khan asked Alvi to initiate an inquiry to see if these violations had indeed taken place. Imran reminded Alvi that it was his constitutional duty as President and as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces to take immediate action and institute an inquiry, citing Chapter II of the Constitution, which “describes the mandate of the armed forces and specifically refers to Articles 243 and 244.”