RAWALPINDI, June 30: Going a step farther in blaming federal government, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Saturday said that PPP-led government in the centre was to blame for shelving Leh Expressway project in Rawalpindi.

The chief minister visited the natural drain, notorious for flooding in rainy season, after hearing people’s problems while sitting in his tent camp office established in Liaquat Bagh as a protest against the long hours of power outages.

With the tide turning against the PPP, the chief minister – who himself had shelved the multi-billion Leh Expressway project after coming to power in 2008 fearing its completion would earn credit for the former president Gen (retired) Pervez Musharraf and his close aide Sheikh Rashid – told his party’s lawmakers and senior officials that federal government never intended to fund the project.

He said the project would be resumed in phases for which his government had allocated Rs250 million this year asking Chairman Planning and Development (PD) Javed Aslam to constitute a committee for preparing design, cost and resolving impediments in constructing the mega project.

In a bid to justify the blame, the chief minister said, “The project, as agreed in Musharraf’s era, was to be equally funded by both provincial and federal government but the latter was in no mood to bear the cost.

“But I promise the project will see the light of the day as Punjab government will now finance it.”

He later visited the drain as Federal Flood Commission (FFC) officials during their visit to Leh Nullah on June 1 had expressed dissatisfaction over the measures taken by the Rawalpindi authorities to control flooding during the monsoon.

A bridge expert on the occasion told Dawn there was no need to conduct fresh feasibility of the project as a detailed survey had already been carried out adding that only problem the project faced was of funds’ allocation.

LAW AND ORDER: The chief minister had called a high-level meeting of police officers at his tent camp for discussing law and order situation in the district besides directly listening to the complaints of the people against police.

The stringent security measures around Liaquat Bagh made it impossible for several complainants to enter the tent office of the province’s chief executive while police also barred family members of the triple murder case from entering the premises.

However, they were later allowed after MNA Shakil Awan intervened.

The large number of people with complaints against police forced the chief minister to pass on the issue to the PML-N lawmakers in Rawalpindi for listening and resolving the grievances of people.