- –PPP chairman announces Punjab-wide visits to educational institutes
LAHORE: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Wednesday said the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has made the census controversial by conducting it in a poor manner.
Addressing a press conference in Lahore, Bilawal said the PML-N didn’t even bother to address the opposition’s reservations, reasserting that there was a lack of transparency in the enumeration process.
“Our stance is the same as it was before the Council of Common Interests (CCI) meeting,” he said, reiterating “it has been quite some time now, but rechecking of one per cent blocks from the provisional census results has not been carried out yet”.
Regarding the progress made in the CCI meeting over the issue, he said the party was satisfied with the progress on the issue; however, the PPP would again raise the issue after elections if its demand were not met. “The PPP endorsed the timely elections as decided during the CCI meeting”, he maintained.
On Monday, during the meeting, all provincial governments had agreed to hold elections on time.
Terming Nawaz as a conspirator, the PPP chairman said ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been involved in every conspiracy against democracy if one saw his past record.
He further said in past our government’s prime ministers had had their names on the Exit Control List, but, unlike them, Nawaz had been getting a privileged treatment even after he was indicted by a court in the corruption cases.
Lambasting the Punjab government over the abduction of Majlis-e-Wahdat-e-Muslimeen’s (MWM) General Secretary Nasir Abbas Shirazi, he demanded the government to produce him before the court as he was picked the by province’s police. “There should be rule of law in Punjab too,” he added.
Calling the contact campaign an attempt to take young voters into confidence, he said the PPP wanted to bring in the younger generation as the party vanguards from the province of Punjab —its hub. He further said that the memories of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto family are alive with the staunch supporters of the party.