KASUR: In his first public address after becoming acting president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif highlighted achievements of his government and let loose his indignation at the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief for “obstructing the development.”

The PTI chief, he said at a gathering in Pattoki on Tuesday, had done nothing but mislead people. He said he had served many legal notices on Imran Khan who didn’t appear before courts even once.

He said he had come to Pattoki for the first time after the governor rule was imposed in the PPP government. “The Pakistanis eliminated the governor rule,” he added.

A good number of people made it to the public gathering venue, where a beaming chief minister expressed hope that the PML-N would rule the country after winning the next general election. He said the country would see a new chapter of progress and prosperity during the next stint of the PML-N.

Once a city of lights, he said, Karachi was going downhill and had been reduced to a picture of neglect with heaps of garbage all around and rundown buses.

The PTI government had destroyed Peshawar, Shahbaz said and added that if given a chance, he would start a metro bus there in one year’s time. He said earlier Imran Khan had been opposing the metro bus project in Punjab and had, in fact, wasted four and a half years by resorting to sit-ins and lock-down of institutions.

He said the PTI chief was lying to people about generation of 75MW of electricity in KP. The credit for eliminating loadshedding from the country goes to the PML-N, he said.

He said the farmers in Punjab were getting interest-free loans and fertiliser at half the price they used to get during previous regimes. He said the deserving students had been awarded stipend worth Rs15 billion during the last nine years in Punjab.

He was all praise for his elder brother Nawaz Sharif who, he said, had been removed from the office of president of the party but he would stay in the hearts of people.

The chief minister also announced development projects including dual carriageway from Kanganpur to Pattoki, 10 Speedo luxury buses from Pattoki to Lahore by July 2018, a hospital in Phoolnagar and public parks.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2018