PTI MPAs not comfortable voting for Elahi in double figures: Punjab's ex-finance minister.

LAHORE -- Several lawmakers from the PTI might express their resentment on Friday by not voting for the party candidate, Parvez Elahi, in the election for chief minister Punjab, says the province's former finance minister.

'In private conversations, we are seeing a lot of dissent within the PTI ranks,' Awais Leghari, an MPA from the ruling PML-N, who was also the finance minister for Punjab till July 11, told Geo.tv over the phone: 'The dissent is because of the rhetoric [PTI chief] Imran Khan has used for Elahi in the past by calling him a daku (thief).'

Leghari added that these MPAs were also not happy with the tenure of former chief minister Usman Buzdar, appointed by PTI in 2018.

'These PTI MPAs could be in the double figures,' he added.

When asked if these MPAs could abstain or not show up on the day of the vote, the former finance minister said that the defection clause applies to lawmakers who abstain from voting in a chief minister's election.

'But if you are absent because of some other reason,' he told meida, 'Then I strongly presume...