MUZAFFARABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice-President Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Friday alleged that Prime Minister Imran Khan was contemplating slicing Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) after throwing occupied Kashmir into India’s pouch.

Speaking at an election rally in Patikka, some 18kms towards northwest of Muzaffarabad, she reiterated her previous allegations that the prime minister had sold out the “blood and honour” of Kashmiri brothers and sisters and was out to take over AJK instead of the India occupied territory.

“Now preparations are afoot to slice Azad Kashmir,” she claimed, and echoed in the same breath a slogan being raised by some of the participants that “every child will fight till death [and] Kashmir will not become a province”.

Remembering Burhan Wani, the young Hizbul Mujahideen commander who was martyred by Indian army, she claimed that while Nawaz Sharif had presented his case at the global level, a concert was held in the Foreign Office on July 8 when the country was observing his fifth death anniversary.

Claims PML-N still popular in the region

She maintained that Nawaz Sharif had rid the people of Pakistan of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but Mr Khan had once again pawned them out of his incompetence and inefficiency.

She said while the government did not have money to get people cheap food supplies and other basic amenities, it did have money to buy votes in AJK.

“Where does this money come from? Is it the money from the foreign funding? Or you have been given itin return for the sell-out of Kashmir? Or you have defrauded the people to amass this money to buy votes,” she commented.

Reminding the prime minister that the Kashmiri people were not a saleable commodity, she said she was surprised as to what Mr Khan would offer to the people of Kashmir when he had disgraced the Pakistanis by making them queue up just for one kilogramme of sugar in the last Ramazan.

“Whether you [Kashmiris] want to continue the journey of progress [under the PML-N government] or set off the journey towards destruction [under the PTI],” she questioned and expressed the hope that AJK would stand by “brave like a tiger Nawaz Sharif who had boldly fought the case of Burhan Wani Shaheed and the Kashmiris” and not by “Imran’s trading of Kashmir”.

“I promise I will not let you face what an ordinary Pakistani is bearing at the hands of this regime,” she added.

Ms Nawaz said after giving away Kashmir Mr Khan had told the nation that it should observe silence of two minutes the way he had opted for silence.

“When it was time to scream about Kashmir across the globe you [PM] tightened your lips,” the PML-N leader said.

She questioned how a man — who had spent all his life in a playground — could know about the foreign policy of a country.

“He keeps on ruthlessly hitting the people of Pakistan with the same bat that he would use on the ground,” she said and asked Mr Khan not to play with the lives of 220 million people if he could not do anything good for them.

She called upon people to rein in and “catch” Imran if Mr Khan attempted to “rig” AJK polls like people had caught the ‘manipulators’ in Daska’s by-election.

Ms Nawaz asserted that PML-N was still a popular political party in the AJK. “You can suppress the voice of Nawaz Sharif, you can declare him absconder… but the people of AJK still admire him,” she maintained, asserting thatthe PML-N would not allow the “sun of selection” to rise in Kashmir.

Earlier, AJK Minister for Industries Noreen Arif, who is the PML-N candidate from Patikka and its surrounding areas, also spoke.

Later, the PML-N leader drove to Neelum valley where she addressed a gathering in Jura in the afternoon.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2021