LONDON: Prime Minis­ter Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday said elections in the country will take place on the same day.

Speaking to reporters after meeting his brother, the party’s supreme leader Nawaz Sharif, at Stanhope House, the premier said, “Elections will happen on one day. In Punjab in the past there was a wrong impression that it is the big brother of the provinces. All provinces are equal. Only doing an election in Punjab is not in Pakistan’s interest.”

Mr Shehbaz met his brother after attending the coronation ceremony of King Charles, where he also interacted with leaders of other Commonwealth nations.

He said, “Parliament’s constitutional rights will be protected, and parliament has one voice on this matter. There is no doubt that parliament within its limits will assert its authority”.

He hit out at ex-chief justice Saqib Nisar. “The former chief justice played a central role in disqualifying Mian Nawaz Sharif on baseless allegations. Day and night he would use suo motu, but was any case of his in the public interest? He was only doing it to make Imran Khan successful. He behaved not as the CJP but as an agent of PTI.”

He added that the purported audio leak of the former judge’s son shows that “there was a conspiracy to bring IK to power”.

Separately, Prime Minister Shehbaz said that for the previous PTI government everything, including the conduct of interstate relations, was a plaything, adds APP.

Reacting strongly to the PTI leadership’s attempt to create controversy over Pakistan’s participation in the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in India, the prime minister on his Twitter handle, said it was deeply troubling how the PTI had tried to generate a controversy around Pakistan’s participation.

“It shouldn’t be surprising though as Imran Niazi has had no qualms about imperiling the country’s vital foreign policy interests in the past too. This is what they did when they were in power. For the PTI, everything including the conduct of interstate relations is a plaything,” the tweet read.

Separately, Information Minister Aurangzeb said PTI chief Imran Khan should not worry about next fiscal year’s budget as “the facility of getting selected was no more available and the facilitators had also gone”.

The [PTI] government which destroyed economy, and caused unprecedented inflation and unemployment for four years will never come to power again, she alleged.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2023