'Ali Amin Gandapur condemned May 9 incident in yesterday's in-camera session,' claims Vawda

Senator Faisal Vawda has claimed that Chief Minister (CM) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Ali Amin Gandapur condemned the May 9 incident during an in-camera session of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS) on Tuesday.

Appearing on a private news outlet the same day, Vawda, who attended the in-camera session, quoted Gandapur as saying, “Ap un ko sazain dain, wo gumrah ho gaye thy (punish them [rioters] as they had been misguided).”

At least 10 people lost their lives, and over a hundred others sustained injuries in the violent protests on May 9 and May 10. Approximately 40 public buildings and military installations were attacked by rioters. These included the Lahore Corps Commander’s House (Jinnah House), Askari Tower in Lahore, General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, the ISI Office in Faisalabad, FC Fort in Chakdara, the Radio Pakistan building in Peshawar, the Toll Plaza at Swat Motorway, and the Mianwali Air Base.

On terrorism's resurgence in KP, former Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Faisal Vawda further quoted Gandapur as saying, “The KP police stand firm, shoulder to shoulder with the Pakistan army,” which it didn’t before.

Declaring CM KP’s statement in the session as “positive and optimistic,” Vawda emphasised that Gandapur’s approach deserves appreciation.

On the same day, prominent journalist Azaz Syed, speaking on the YouTube channel Talk SHOCK, made similar claims about Gandapur. He maintained that CM KP supported the state policy regarding terrorism in the session. “As the chief executive of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he [Ali Amin Gandapur] spoke positively and talked about engagement [with the state],” the journalist added.

The in-camera meeting was held on Tuesday as Pakistan grapples with a resurgence of terrorism, particularly in KP and Balochistan, with security forces and law enforcement agencies facing increasingly frequent attacks.

Prime Minister (PM) Shehbaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Syed Asim Munir, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (DG ISI) Lieutenant General Asim Malik, chief ministers of all four provinces, including Gandapur, and other top officials attended the in-camera session of PCNS in Islamabad.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) did not attend the session. PTI Secretary General Salman Akram Raja, while speaking at a press conference in Islamabad hours before the session, said that their party would skip it until they were given access to the party founder in jail.

Separately, Imran Khan’s counsel, Faisal Chaudhry, claimed to have held a detailed meeting with the party founder in Adiala Jail. According to him, Khan described the boycott of the PCNS meeting as the right decision.

“He questioned what kind of consensus the government hopes to achieve by sidelining the country’s largest political party,” Chaudhry said.