ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan on Tuesday accused India of trying to sabotage his party’s ‘reform movement’, doubling down on earlier claims that the eastern neighbour’s aggressive designs along the Line of Control (LoC) were an effort to take some pressure off Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Speaking to reporters outside his Bani Gala residence before leaving for Quetta, the PTI chief said that since India was aware it could not defeat a nuclear-armed state militarily, therefore, it was trying to “implode” Pakistan under a new “doctrine”.

“It is strange that whenever we start doing something, something major happens in the country,” Mr Khan said, an apparent reference to the terrorist attack on a police training centre in Quetta the previous night.

Says tensions with India always spike when PM Sharif is under pressure

“It is apparent that India is [trying to] implode Pakistan. Under [this] doctrine, it wants to create chaos in Pakistan and wants the ongoing reform movement against corruption in the country to fail,” he said.

The PTI chief had earlier alleged that India was helping Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, saying that whenever the government came under pressure, tensions would flare up along the LoC.

When asked if he wanted to say that the government was behind the terrorist attack in Quetta, Mr Khan stopped short. “But history shows that this always happens,” he said in the same breath, adding that the Quetta attack could be a part of the Indian doctrine of chaos in Pakistan.

Mr Khan said the Balochistan chief minister, who belonged to the PML-N, had already been saying that India was behind terrorism in the province, but the prime minister was not ready to utter a single word in this regard.

He also lashed out at the prime minister for not raising the issue of Indian involvement in Balochistan and Karachi during his recent visit to the United Nations.

The PTI chief alleged that links had been established between the Indian spy agency RAW and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain, but the government was silent on this front too. Instead, the rulers have been speaking the language of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he claimed.

On the other hand, PM Modi was approaching every forum to try and have Pakistan declared a terrorist state. He said it was only because of China that India had so far not been able to achieve its aim.

Declaring Nawaz Sharif a “security risk” for the country, Mr Khan accused the government of failing to stop terror-funding in the country, which was an important part of the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism. He said there was a link between terrorism and corruption, adding that the rulers had no time to protect the country’s national interests because protecting PM Sharif’s corruption was more important for them.

Mr Khan was scheduled to visit Abbottabad on Tuesday, but cancelled the trip due to the Quetta attack.

Speaking on the occasion, PTI vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi rejected the government’s claims that the party was wooing militants and jihadis for its Nov 2 lockdown plan. Mr Qureshi also denied reports that his party had invited the Difa-i-Pakistan Council (DPC) to take part in their sit-in.

He termed such reports part of government propaganda, saying that PTI had always invited families, women and students to its programmes.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2016