ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Saturday approached the Islamabad High Court (IHC) with the request to recover public money the current government spent on expensive and “agenda-specific” advertisements and deposit it in the treasury.

An application in this regard has been filed by PTI Islamabad President Ali Nawaz Awan, which will be pursued by Dr Babar Awan.

The PTI has requested the court to dec­lare the advertisements given by the government illegal and unconstitutional as it negated the decision of the Supreme Court.

The party demanded that legal action be taken against those who used public tax money either for personal advertisement or for a specific agenda.

“This is a great tragedy, as on the one hand, it is being said that the national kitty is empty while on the other, the government is spending millions of rupees of public money on advertisements about Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s visit to Turkey,” Mr Awan said.

Therefore, the IHC has been requested to seek clarification on the matter and take legal action against this breach to the public exchequer, he added.

Meanwhile, PTI Secretary General Asad Umar has said prolonged power outages and back-breaking price hike had made people psychological patients.

He said the ‘imported’ government had broken the record of the three-and-a-half years of PTI’s tenure by increasing prices of petroleum products by Rs60 in just one week.

Former minister Hammad Azhar said the government had failed to control price hike and ensure production of electricity. “People had never imagined such load-shedding during PTI’s tenure. Issues cannot be addressed by load-shedding and price hike. Non-serious people have come to power and they cannot run the country,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2022