CHITRAL, April 17: Former district nazim and district president of the ruling PML Shahzada Mohyuddin has criticised his detractors and said that he had been elected several times because he has been serving people with devotion and sicerity.

He was talking to this correspondent here on Monday.

The PML leader rejected allegations of corruption levelled against him by MNA Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali and said that the allegations were baseless.

He said that if he had any proof of dishonesty, he should come forward and hold him accountable before the people and the law, adding that people could no longer be duped by mere rhetoric. Rejecting what he termed Maulana Chitrali’s bid to portray himself as the ‘hero of Lowari tunnel project’, he said that President Pervez Musharraf had announced the project in 2000 when the Maulana was still a nobody in a Peshawar mosque, hardly known by anyone outside its confines.

He said that the project had been one of the longstanding demands of the people of Chitral, adding that the completion of the project could not be credited to anyone other than President Musharraf, who took it upon himself to complete it in record time.

Criticising the MMA government, he said that it had utterly failed to serve the people of one of the country’s most backward district, adding that only the federal government was doing all it can to ameliorate the people’s lot and eliminate poverty.

Highlighting Islamabad’s interest in the area’s progress, he said that the president had ordered to write-off Rs170 million owed by small farmers, electrified several villages besides providing funds to the provincial government for Enumerating some of them, he told that during his visit to Chitral in July last, the president ordered to write off the agricultural loans to the volume of Rs 170 million to the small farmers, electrified many villages and provided funds to the provincial government for the construction of a suspension bridge at Mastuj capable of handling trucks.