KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has asked Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan to pay attention to the plight of people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa instead of coming to Sindh.

“Imran Khan ought to take care of Peshawar, Mardan, Naushera, etc, before coming to Sindh which is over 1,000 kilometres away [from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa],” he said.

Briefing newsmen about the proceedings of the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Sindh Council, which met here on Tuesday, Mr Shah, who is also the provincial president of the PPP, criticised the cricketer-turned-politician who was planning to approach people of the interior of Sindh after holding a big rally in Karachi on Sept 21.

When asked whether the PPP leadership was afraid of Mr Khan’s public meetings, he said the PTI chief did not bother to pay homage to the father of the nation despite addressing a public meeting outside the Quaid’s mausoleum in Karachi.

He said that Mr Khan did not express any sympathy for flood-affected families.

The CM said that the PPP leadership would render any sacrifice instead of using well-furnished containers or going home at night to sleep.

“We don’t have such containers and our leadership believes in taking workers along,” he said in a thinly veiled reference to the container being used by the PTI chief in Islamabad, where he has been camping for over a month and a half.

He claimed that the PPP’s public meeting scheduled to be held on Oct 18 would break all records of previous rallies in Karachi. “The Oct 18 public meeting will break all records of all other public meetings in Karachi except those addressed by Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Shaheed Benazir Bhutto.”

He said that the Sindh Council reviewed the preparations for the Oct 18 public meeting at the Quaid’s mausoleum and no other issue came under discussion.

Mr Shah said that although threats to PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari could be from anyone, he was a daring and courageous leader like his mother and wanted to follow in her footsteps.

Accompanied by Senator Taj Haider and Jam Mehtab Dahar, he said that the Sindh Council session was attended by almost all 350 members.

The council reposed full confidence in the leadership of Mr Bhutto-Zardari and co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, he added.

About the investigations of the Oct 18, 2007 Karsaz bombing on the homecoming procession of Ms Bhutto, he said that the PPP did not pursue the case or get lodged a second FIR because the case had been ruined due to the registration of the first FIR on behalf of the state.

“Besides, if we have insisted registration of another FIR against the then chief minister and others, we would have been accused of taking political revenge,” he said.

However, he said that the case was still pending in court.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2014