LAHORE: The PML-N has questioned exempting Banigala encroachments from the clean-up operation while demolishing structures of the poor in the anti-encroachment drive.

“Small shops and kiosks of poor people are being removed daily in the so-called anti-encroachment operation but the authorities seem reluctant when comes the question of large structures of the rich and the influential such as Banigala (where Prime Minister Imran Khan also owns a large estate),” Opposition Leader in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz said at a corner meeting for by-polls in PP-168 here on Sunday.

Pointing at ‘double standards’ in the accountability process too, he said the prime minister talked of arresting 50 people in corruption cases but was not answering the people’s question that how his sister Aleema Khan amassed properties worth billions of rupees abroad.

He said the accountability agency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa set up by the PTI itself had been closed after incurring expenses worth millions of rupees without achieving any results. He said the PTI leaders would criticise other parties’ governments for not allocating sufficient funds for health and education sectors but the health sector of KP was also in a poor state despite five-year rule of the PTI in the province. The chief justice of Pakistan himself had expressed his displeasure on it, he added.

Reiterating the PML-N claim that its mandate was stolen in the July 25 elections, Hamza said they had decided to join the elected houses with a heavy heart only for the cause of democracy. He said the PTI lost with a margin of over 10,000 votes in the by-polls for the National Assembly constituency in Lahore (NA-131) from where Imran Khan had won with a thin lead in the general election.

He asked the party workers to remain vigilant in the Dec 13 contest for PP-168.

Recalling that the PTI had been ridiculing Lahore’s metro bus as “Jangla bus”, the PML-N leader said the ruling party itself initiated a similar mass transport project in Peshawar but could not accomplish it despite incurring more than double the cost at which the Lahore Metro had been completed.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2018