ISLAMABAD, Dec 25: The Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz sees a conspiracy behind the ‘launching’ of Dr Tahirul Qadri just before elections and believes that he has been brought back to the country to target the PML-N and block its way forward.

The allegations were levelled by PML-N leaders, including its chairman Raja Zafarul Haq, at a function held at the party’s central secretariat to mark the birth anniversary of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, birthday of Mian Nawaz Sharif and Christmas on Tuesday.

Almost every speaker criticised Dr Qadri and accused him of working on the agenda of some internal and external forces to derail the democratic process in the country.

Without naming Imran Khan, the PML-N chairman said that after his failure to deliver, the forces which had supported the referendum of former military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf had now introduced a “new pawn” on the political chessboard. He said he was surprised by the amount of money used by Dr Qadri for the success of his Sunday’s public meeting in Lahore. He said Dr Qadri should tell the nation that from where he had got this amount of money to organise such a big show because “such resources are not available even to governments”.

Commenting on Dr Qadri’s slogan “save the state, not politics”, PML-N Senator Zafar Ali Shah said his party would save both the state and politics, adding that the PML-N believed that a state could not survive without politics. “The very existence of the state will be at stake if you exclude politics from it.”

MNAs Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry and Anjum Aqeel Khan and the party’s former information secretary Siddiqul Farooque also spoke on the occasion.

Talking to Dawn, Zafar Ali Shah said he saw “international intrigue, internal conspiracy” behind the move to bring Dr Qadri to the country to create chaos.

When asked why the PML-N was feeling threatened, he said the party did not consider him a political threat, but he could be a threat to the democratic system in the country. Dr Qadri had said that elections could be delayed, if necessary, but the PML-N and other democratic parties believed that any delay could prove disastrous for the country, he added.