KARACHI, May 23: As far as parliamentary politics is concerned, it’s business as usual for the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). But at the organisational level, the party is facing a serious crisis that has compelled its chief Altaf Hussain to take drastic measures, including the disbanding of a supreme decision-making forum, the coordination committee.

No one in the MQM was willing to speak on the issue openly on Thursday. However, background interviews with some key leaders suggested that the crisis, which they said was not the first one to hit the party, had begun the day when some MQM workers manhandled party leaders and office-bearers.

They were, however, convinced that there was no challenge to Mr Hussain’s leadership and there was no chance of any defection.

They said the MQM chief was unhappy over the party’s performance in the elections and with the large number of votes the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) bagged in the polls.

“We were in the process of reviewing our mistakes and preparing our strategy when PTI leader Zahra Shahid Hussain was killed and Imran Khan blamed Altaf bhai for the murder,” an MQM leader said.

Ms Hussain was shot dead on May 18 on the eve of re-polling at 43 polling stations of NA-250 constituency. Within minutes, Mr Khan issued a statement holding the MQM chief responsible for her death.

Scores of MQM workers gathered at the party’s Nine Zero headquarters and when Mr Hussain slammed the coordination committee for failing to defend him effectively, MQM workers went out of control and roughed up leaders, office-bearers and even media personnel.

Mr Hussain expressed his concerns over the violation of party discipline and asked those involved in the hooliganism to submit their written apology.

Sources said the Karachi Tanzeemi Committee (KTC) of the MQM managed to trace all those involved in the manhandling incident through footage of television channels and instead of accepting their written apology, punished them.

“The KTC believed that those involved in the incident were acting on their own but perhaps that was not the case,” said a source. “The workers responsible for manhandling were physically punished and when Altaf bhai came to know about it he took it as a personal insult.”

On May 21, at a ‘general workers meeting’, the MQM chief announced disbanding of the KTC, a move that he did not make on May 18 despite workers’ insistence to do so, and said that more changes would be announced in another meeting to be held on Saturday (May 25).

The following day, the MQM coordination committee revoked the party’s basic membership and expelled the head of the KTC, Hammad Siddiqui, ‘for violating party discipline’. Later, memberships of two members of the MQM coordination committee, Saleem Tajik and Shakeel Umer, and a former member of the KTC, Farooq Saleem, were also suspended.

On Thursday, Mr Hussain dissolved the coordination committee comprising more than three dozen members in Karachi and London and said in a statement that names for the new committee would be finalised on May 25 in the workers’ convention in Azizabad.

He formed a 12-member ad hoc coordination committee, which would function till Saturday. Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Aamir Khan, Kanwar Naveed Jamil, Dr Nusrat, Dr Sagheer Ahmed, Dr Farooq Sattar, Saif Yar Khan, Ashfaq Mangi, Gulfraz Khattak, Yousuf Shahwani, Iftikhar Randhawa and Ms Mumtaz Anwar are the new members of the ad hoc committee and former members of the dissolved coordination committee have been asked to assist the ad hoc committee.

Anis Kaimkhani, a deputy convenor of the MQM coordination committee who oversaw all organisational affairs, was not included in the ad hoc committee.

According to a separate statement, senior MQM leader Muhammad Anwar was ‘relieved of his responsibilities regarding the international affairs’ for the party in London for health reasons.

“These organisational matters have nothing to do with the PTI or its getting votes in Karachi. Our parliamentary side is working as usual,” said a leader, adding: “Altaf bhai met Rehman Malik today in London who brought a message of President Asif Zardari.... Altaf Bhai had also congratulated Nawaz Sharif for his views he expressed in a policy speech recently.”

This crisis, like all previous ones, would be over soon, said the leader.