ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke to former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan by phone on Friday and offered condolences over the death of his nephew.

Captain Nauman, Chaudhry Nisar’s nephew, died recently in a road accident in Rawat Chak Bailey Road.

According to a statement issued by Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb, Chaudhry Nisar thanked the prime minister for his gesture.

The former interior minister, once a close aide to PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, had left the party in 2017 after developing differences with the latter and his daughter Maryam Nawaz over handling of the situation after the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Panama Papers case.

Chaudhry Nisar contested elections for the National Assembly and the Punjab legislature in 2018 as an independent candidate and won the provincial assembly seat. But he did not take oath as member of the Punjab Assembly until May last year in protest against alleged rigging in the 2018 elections, stating that “my NA victory stolen in favour of PTI candidate Ghulam Sarwar Khan”.

Chaudhry Nisar had been elected from Punjab Assembly’s constituency PP-10 Rawalpindi-V with a margin of over 34,000 votes, but he lost the NA-59 election.

His vote in the provincial assembly will be valuable during the coming election for chief minister as a tough contest is expected between the PML-N’s Hamza Shehbaz and the PTI– PML-Q nominee, Chaudhry Parvez Elahi.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2022