LAHORE: The PML-N claims that 82pc parliamentarians of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) are tax evaders while the tax amount paid by many of the rest does not correspond to the value of their known assets and income.

It has also regretted that the leadership of the Islamabad sit-ins made fun of the Chinese president’s visit at the cost of national interests.

“PTI chairman Imran Khan is alleging day and night that except those of the PTI, elected representatives of all other parties are tax thieves and plunderers. But the fact is that 82pc of the PTI MPs did not pay taxes for the year 2012-13,” said PML-N media coordinator Muhammad Mehdi during a press conference here on Sunday.

Says Imran paid Rs194,936 tax last year

Flanked by Mian Obaidullah advocate, he told a press conference that Murad Saeed, Shehryar Afreedi, Hamidul Haq, Sajid Nawaz and Siraj Ahmed Khan were among the said tax evaders.

He said Imran Khan had paid just Rs194,936 tax for the previous financial year though the cricketer-turned-politician was living in palaces both in Islamabad and Lahore.

Similarly, he said, Jahangir Tareen owned multiple factories, businesses and a 7,100-kanal farmhouse which also had the facility of an airstrip in Lodhran district but the ‘sugar king’ paid just Rs8 million as income, customs and sales taxes combined for the year 2012-13.

Mr Mehdi claimed that a known lawyer and a singer - two PTI leaders - who earned millions of rupees for their single appearances showed their yearly incomes in the candidatures as merely Rs1.0m and Rs0.8m, respectively.

The PML-N leader said those accusing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of nepotism were hypocrites as they were overlooking the fact that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak’s six and KP Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser’s five relatives were either in the assemblies or were holding key posts in the province.

Referring to the patriotism that Imran Khan boasts of in his speeches, Mr Mehdi recalled that the fast bowler had abandoned Pakistan team during India tour in 1978 to join the Kerry Packer cricket league. He also remembered that during the 1983 cricket world cup, Imran did not bowl even a single ball, pretending to have an ankle injury but soon after the world tournament was over he joined the county cricket and bowled for his county’s team as a normal player for the lust for money.

The PML-N leader lamented that Imran Khan had made fun of Chinese president’s visit – first saying that the tour is not due and then claiming that Mr Xi Jinping was coming only to extend loans and not for investment. Sheikh Rashid went many steps forward, Mr Mehdi regretted, by saying that China had sold substandard material and Chinese were ‘Do number’ (dishonest) people.

The sit-ins leadership, he said, overlooked the fact that Mr Xi was the first head of any state with veto power in the UN Security Council visiting Islamabad during the last 10 years. He recalled that earlier Chinese leaders used to visit Pakistan at least once in a year.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2014