ISLAMABAD/LAHORE: A war of words that broke out between two former members of Nawaz Sharif’s cabinet heated up on Monday, when Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan accused the former information minister of playing a role in the leak of information last year, about a secret meeting between top civilian and military officials, which led to the news report controversy.

A day earlier, Pervaiz Ras­hid had called on the former interior minister to “leave the party”, since he had spoken against the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in times of crisis. He had accused the mercurial former interior minister of having him “sacked in order to please someone”, a thinly-veiled reference to the military establishment.

“If Chaudhry Nisar is a man of principles, he should leave the PML-N. I will speak to the party leadership about a decision in this regard,” Senator Pervaiz Rashid had told a private TV channel.

In a statement issued through his spokesperson on Monday, Chaudhry Nisar termed the former information minister’s statement “ridiculous”, saying that it came from a person who only had a modest association with the PML-N and had spent his life in a different party — a reference to Mr Rashid’s time in the Pakistan Peoples Party.

“It is quite surprising that a person who has never contested the election for a councillor’s seat... has self-ass­um­ed the role of a top party leader. It would be appropriate for PML-N president Mian Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to order that the …leak report be made public so that the mischief of the concerned person is known to all,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2018