ISLAMABAD: Angry over Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed’s controversial remarks about former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a number of opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders on Saturday lashed out at the minister and asked him to resign over the increase in train accidents in the country.

Responding to the minister’s challenge to the PPP for a debate on the role of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in politics, General Secretary of the PPP’s Punjab chapter Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed invited Sheikh Rashid Ahmed to have a debate with him about the performance of railways.

Mr Manzoor alleged that after gulping the hard-earned money of railways employees, Sheikh Rashid was showing railways as a department in profit. He said since Sheikh Rashid had become railways minister, 290 people had been killed and over 200 injured in train accidents.

The PPP leader said Sheikh Rashid had started Mianwali Express without any preparation and this train experienced an accident on the very first trip killing 12 people. Giving a break-up, he said so far 24 accidents had been reported from Karachi division, 19 each in Sukkur and Lahore divisions, six in Multan division and eight in Rawalpindi division.

Speaking at a news conference in Lahore on the Friday’s train-bus collision in Rohri, the minister in response to a question repeated his claim that PPP founding chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was also a “selected prime minister” and he used to call military dictator Gen Ayub Khan as “daddy”.

The minister even challenged the PPP leadership, saying that he was ready to have a live debate on television to prove his claim about former prime minister ZA Bhutto.

Chaudhry Manzoor said whenever there was a discussion on Sheikh Rashid’s incapability and inability to run the railways ministry, he started talking about politics.

“He talks about Bhuttos who had a shining political career like Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto who was an exemplary politician of the sub-continent,” the PPP leader added.

He said in the next National Assembly session, the PPP members would expose “Sheikh Rashid and his tainted and questionable character”.

Another PPP leader and Senator Maula Bakhsh Chandio said that the railways minister could not hide his “incapability and inefficiency” by using “foul language”. He said while the train accidents had almost become a routine, the minister was still busy in keeping himself in the media. He asked Sheikh Rashid to analyse his own character before raising a finger on ZA Bhutto.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2020