SWABI, March 23: Three opposition parties challenged Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Friday to contest election from the Swabi district to judge his ‘popularity’ among the masses.

Talking to journalists, leaders of the Awami National Party, Jamaat-i-Islami and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf said that Mr Aziz, while addressing a public gathering at the Swabi Cricket stadium on Sunday last, had claimed that the ruling PML-Q would emerge victorious in the next general elections. They said that federal minister and PML-Q provincial president Amir Muqam had urged the premier to contest the general elections from the NWFP, especially Swabi district.

The ANP and JI leaders also rejected the allegations made by Mr Muqam that they ran a campaign to stop people from attending the public meeting of the prime minister.

ANP leader and former district nazim Jehan Zeb Khan said that the allegations were made only to please the prime minister.The ANP was a democratic party and it believed in independent approach. “Democratic people never indulge in such acts,” he said.

JI deputy general secretary Fida Mohammad said that his party did not contact people for the failure of prime minister’s public meeting. “When people want to participate in a public meeting no one can force them, but the reality was that the people were not interested to go there,” he said.

He said that the prime minister’s public meeting was in fact the initiation of the election campaign and he was just short of announcing the election date.

Asad Qaisar, provincial president of the PTI, said that the prime minister remained mum over the establishment of a university in Swabi and provision of incentives to the Gadoon Amazai Industrial Estate.