LAHORE – A petition was filed in the Lahore High Court on Saturday seeking to restrain Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif from giving a reception in honour of the national cricket team.
Iftikhar Hussain Rajput filed the petition submitting that the CM should be stopped from hosting the reception, which will cost Rs 3 million to the provincial exchequer. He said that if Shahbaz wants to give prizes to the cricketers, he should do it from his own pocket.
The petitioner, through his counsel Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffrey, submitted that close friends of the CM have also been invited to the reception scheduled for April 5. He accused Shahbaz of holding the reception just to get media projection by causing a loss to the provincial exchequer.
Rajput said that in 1999, during Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif’s government, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy but the whole Sharif family fled to Saudi Arabia instead of staying in the country. He said that the Sharifs never played a role for the country’s betterment.
The petitioner requested the court to make the CM a party in the case and ask him to hire his counsel from his own pocket. Rajput clubbed the petition along with Jaffrey’s another petition seeking to restrain Shahbaz from distributing prize money amongst cricketers from the provincial exchequer.
