PESHAWAR: The caretaker cabinet of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Friday held its farewell meeting.

The meeting was chaired by caretaker Chief Minister retired Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and attended by ministers, additional chief secretary and administrative secretaries at the cabinet room of the Civil Secretariat here.

A statement issued here said the chief minister thanked his cabinet members, government officials and people for helping and cooperating with his government to perform its constitutional obligation of holding peaceful, free and fair elections.

He said holding of peaceful elections was a big challenge for his government and that they were fully successful in fulfilling it.

Dost Mohammad declares elections free, fair in cabinet’s farewell meeting

The chief minister said he had selected all cabinet members on ‘merit’ and that the government had provided a level-playing field to all political parties to contest elections.

“We’d to face some painful incidents during the initial days of our tenure but the government prepared threat evaluation guidelines and provided tight security cordon to political gatherings and political leaders,” he said.

The chief minister said the government had secured the Frontier Constabulary’s 68 platoons and 500 personnel of the Azad Jammu Kashmir police for elections and deployed the police in vulnerable areas of the province.

He said he had personally monitored the polling process on July 25 and put security forces and police on alert to ensure peace.

The chief minister said he had proved his critics wrong by showing impartiality during election by ensuing its freeness and fairness.

He said it was imperative to integrate tribal districts in the province and that all government resources needed to be utilised to restore the state’s writ.

The chief minister added that integration would be a long process but imperative one for the country’s security.

He said the people, police and security forces had offered huge sacrifices to ensure law and order during the war against terrorism.

He said he had brought down the monthly electricity bill of the chief minister’s house from Rs1.9 million to Rs600,000.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2018