RAWALPINDI, June 3: Pakistan Muslim League-N leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has said that the party’s president, Mian Shahbaz Sharif, will take over as chief minister of Punjab as the Election Commission has issued a notification about his election to the PP-48 Bhakkar-II seat.

He said that Mr Sharif would take oath in two to three days at the Governor’s House despite his party’s reservations over the appointment of Salman Taseer as governor.

Addressing a press conference after announcing a development package for the district of Rawalpindi on Tuesday, Mr Khan said that PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif would not be in Pakistan on June 10 when lawyers would start their long march on Islamabad and by that time Shahbaz Sharif would be the chief minister and, therefore, both of them not be able to take part in the lawyers’ movement for restoration of the judiciary.

He said the elder Sharif would be with his wife who would undergo a medical check-up in London on June 10, but other party leaders and workers would participate in the protest.

He said that reinstatement of the judges was a prime objective of his party and it had sacrificed its ministries at the centre for the cause.

When asked about a formula put forward by PML-N legislator Ayaz Amir that all three ‘controversial figures’ — President Pervez Musharraf, deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar — should be removed, he said it was Mr Amir’s personal own view and not of PML-N.

He said he had earlier called for a commission on the issue of Kargil war and would reiterate it in his budget speech in the National Assembly.

He said that such a commission had become necessary now because of a statement by former Rawalpindi corps commander Lt-Gen (retd) Jamshed Gulzar Kiani that the prime minister had not been taken into confidence on the Kargil operation.

“If India can constitute a commission on Kargil why not Pakistan,” he asked.

He said that the PML-N was against giving a safe passage to Pervez Musharraf and demanded his trail under Article 6 of the Constitution. “As long as the president is there, there will be no peace in the country,” he said.