MUZAFFARABAD: A senior member of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) cabinet on Monday advised a former AJK president and prime minister not to make “slanderous” statements against the top leadership of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) “to avoid a tit-for-tat response from PML-N workers”.

Senior Minister Chaudhry Tariq Farooq told reporters at his office that Sardar Sikandar Hayat, also a former central vice president of the PML-N, had made some “defamatory and derogatory” comments about Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz and [AJK Prime Minister] Raja Farooq Haider after formally ending his association with PML-N and rejoining his previous Muslim Conference party on Feb 12.

According to him the PML-N workers were seething at Mr Hayat’s “scurrilous attacks” but were exercising restraint because “our political training and culture does not allow us to pay the accusers back in their own coin”.

The senior minister maintained that “since the memory of the octogenarian leader [Mr Hayat] was not serving him well, many of his statements were completely misplaced and inapt and thus hurtful for the PML-N cadres who firmly stood by their leadership and its narrative.”

“I would urge him to restrict himself to the AJK politics if at all he cannot resist making political statements,” he said.

Mr Farooq claimed that PML-N government had worked for the betterment of AJK people without any discrimination which would help it clinch victory once again in the upcoming polls.

The AJK minister was of the view that Prime Minister Imran Khan’s purported statement that PTI would form the next government in AJK “at all costs” was unbecoming of his office.

“Azad Kashmir is a sensitive region and cannot afford any misadventure by the central government or any other institution because its repercussions will be devastating,” he warned.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2021