PTI’s petition has no new allegation, says Pervaiz

Minister for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Senator Pervaiz Rashid on Monday said the petition filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the Supreme Court has no new allegation.

Talking to a private TV channel here, the minister said all allegations levelled in the petition were old, had been repeated in the last 25 years and proven false.

“No allegation is related to any project under the tenure of any government of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), rather they related to the personal business of the party leader Muhammad Nawaz Sharif,” he added. He said the PML-N chief had been elected as the prime minister of Pakistan three times and had completed a number of development projects worth billions of dollars in his every tenure.

“PTI Chief Imran Khan, who had crossed all limits in enmity of PMLN, had failed to level allegation in his petition regarding any kind of corruption, mismanagement or kickbacks in any project of the incumbent government,” he said.

He said the PTI’s recent petition was a certificate of honesty for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The minister said Imran Khan who had approached the apex court should trust the judicial system and wait for the verdict.

The PTI chief should not spread chaos in the streets on the basis of his so-called allegations before the court verdict came, he said, adding the protests on roads reflected Imran’s lack of confidence in judiciary which, according to him, might come into the meaning of contempt of court too. The three previous governments including two regimes of Benazir Bhutto and one of Pervez Musharraf had failed to prove the same allegations, he added. He said if Pervez Musharraf could be able to prove these allegations then he would not have used the plane hijacking case. The minister said the family of PM Sharif had set up a factory in the UAE which was inaugurated by the head of UAE after the industry of prime minister’s family in Pakistan was nationalised in 1972, during the first regime of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

This business was not hidden as its pictures were published in newspapers, he said.