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Category: Politics

  • Cuteness overloaded: Maryam’s toy shopping on video call with granddaughter goes viral

    Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz has been spotted speaking to her granddaughter while looking for toys, a video of which has gone viral over the internet.

    In the video, reportedly shot at a rest-stop on the Bahawalpur-Lahore route, the PML-N leader was seen speaking to granddaughter Serena, telling her what she had bought for her and asking what else did she want.

    “I got red chips for you,” Maryam was seen telling the kid on a video call. “You want to see?” She is then seen heading over to a wall where a toy doctor set is hanging. “Look… look at this doctor’s set Serena. You want this one?” “You want the doctor’s set or do you want the bus?” she asks before reciting the nursery rhyme “Wheels on the Bus”.

    “Maryam Nawaz specially stopped at a rest area on her way back to Lahore from Bwp to get things for her granddaughter Serena… Showing her toys on a video call,” PML-N’s Sania Ashiq wrote while tweeting the video.

    “The pleasures and joy of being a Nano,” Maryam said while reacting to it. On May 6, 2018, Mehrunisa, Maryam’s daughter and the granddaughter of former prime minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif, gave birth to the baby girl. A picture of the baby in Maryam’s arms had also gone viral later.

  • Nothing wrong with U-turns if they don’t ‘compromise ideology’: PM

    Nothing wrong with U-turns if they don’t ‘compromise ideology’: PM

    Prime Minister Imran Khan has defended his U-turns once again, saying that going back on one’s words is fine as long as it doesn’t compromise “ideology”.

    This is not the first time Imran has tried to defend the actions that saw him walk away from his promises. In 2018, he had said: “A leader who does not take ‘U-turns’ [in the best interests of the nation] is not a ‘real leader’.”

    APP, the state-run news agency, reported the PM as saying that the idea of making “compromises to reach the ultimate goal was never bad until one compromised the ideology”. “I will never make a compromise on an NRO. The U-turn is when you give up your goal,” he remarked.

    In an interview with Dunya News on Friday, the PM also talked about his statement wherein he had said that he was not prepared to run the country. “My statement that I was not prepared was completely misunderstood,” he said, adding: “I have never made any excuses that I was not prepared.”

    According to the premier, only a “fool would not know about the problems of the country”. The PM said the two years have passed with great “difficulty” but now things are looking better. “Good times are soon to come.” “People will decide about my performance after five years [and] God willing, Pakistan will soon have great times.”

    Speaking about economy, Imran said expenditure is on the rise as opposed to the income. “Reducing expenditure at home can become a pain,” he said, adding that half of tax revenue is spent on debt servicing.

    The current government has paid back $20 billion worth of loans over the past two years and the current account deficit has also been in positive for the past five months, he added.

    The remittances and exports have increased as well, the PM said, referring to a boost in the textile industry.

  • Lahore CCPO Umar Sheikh removed

    Lahore CCPO Umar Sheikh removed

    Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has removed Lahore police chief Umar Sheikh from his post.

    Ghulam Mehmood Dogar, who was serving as DIG, Technical Procurement, CPO, Punjab, will be the new Capital City Police Officer (CCPO).

    Whereas, the notification issued by the government said that Umar Sheikh will be “posted as Deputy Inspector General of Police/Deputy Commandant of Punjab Constabulary, Farooqabad, against a vacant post”.

    Sheikh was posted as the Lahore police chief in September. Since then he has been involved in a number of controversies.

    Soon after his posting, he allegedly told his subordinates that on any sensitive issue, the Lahore police must seek his permission even if they receive directions from the Central Police Office (CPO).

    This had irked IGP Shoaib Dastgir, who refused to work as the IG till the removal of Sheikh. However, the government removed the IG following a standoff between the two.

    Sheikh had also blamed the rape survivor in the motorway rape case. The CCPO had said rape survivor should have been more careful and taken a safer route to avoid the rapists.

    “I am shocked… you are a mother of three and the only driver late at night… [she] should have taken the GT [Grand Trunk] Road instead, which is densely populated,” he had said while speaking to Dunya News.

    Sheikh went had further said that the woman should “at least have checked her fuel before taking the motorway”.

    Recently, CCPO Sheikh was in the crosshairs of the Lahore High Court that had sought record of the CCPO’s interviews after he criticised the courts for freeing criminals.

    Reacting to the statement of the CCPO Shaikh in which he said the criminals detained by the police were given bail by the courts, the chief justice had said the suspects are granted bail in line with the constitution.

    He had said such statements by CCPO Shaikh were akin to committing contempt of court and asked the Punjab advocate general to give details of his interviews in 15 days.


  • Minister, who got PIA flights banned in Europe, refuses to admit mistake

    Minister, who got PIA flights banned in Europe, refuses to admit mistake

    Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar has refused to admit that his controversial remarks that accused the Pakistani pilots of having fake licences caused massive losses to the national airlines and resulted in a ban on its flights in Europe.

    In a show with Geo’s Shahzeb Khanzada, the minister said he didn’t say anything wrong and that his honesty must be “appreciated” and that the entire sector was facing losses due to COVID-19, not just the national carrier.

    After a deadly plane crash in May 2020, the minister on the floor of parliament had claimed 262 pilots had fake licences. His statement created an uproar, resulting in a ban on Pakistani pilots. The ban in Europe still persists.

    Also, investigations had reportedly revealed that 182 out of the 262 pilots have valid credentials.

    However, the minister said despite all the bans his steps should be lauded because he was pushing for transparency.“Should we not have taken any action? You should appreciate that someone is taking initiative. Our transparency should be appreciated,” he said in the show.

    He further said that the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) had a satisfactory score of “97.6%” which was considered “great”. At this, the host retorted that the EU ban on the PIA still remains, no matter the score, because of the statement made by the minister.

    But, Ghulam Sarwar insisted that his steps should be appreciated despite the fact that PM Imran Khan and the attorney general had already said that the PIA issue was mishandled.

    According to a report in July, the PIA was likely to incur losses over Rs100 billion due to suspension of international flights amid the fake licences controversy and the coronavirus pandemic.

  • Nine people arrested after mob sets ablaze Hindu temple in Karak

    Nine people arrested after mob sets ablaze Hindu temple in Karak

    After a mob provoked by local clerics destroyed a Hindu temple in Karak, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on Wednesday, police have detained nine suspects in the case.

    Videos making rounds on social media showed thick smoke billowing from the site as men used hammers to damage the walls of the building. They also set it on fire.

    Local clerics had told authorities that they would be organising a peaceful protest against the alleged expansion of the 100-year-old temple, Rahmatullah Wazir, a police officer told news agency, Reuters. But the clerics started giving “provocative speeches,” prompting the mob to set the temple ablaze.

    Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari condemned the attack and urged the provincial government to “ensure culprits [are] brought to justice.”

    District police chief Irfanullah Khan told Reuters nine suspects had been arrested following the attack.

    The temple, first built in the early 1900s as a shrine, was vandalised in 1997. In 2015, the Supreme Court ordered it be reconstructed. 

    “We will stage a protest in front of the Supreme Court against the attack on our temple which is one of the four largest holy sites of the Hindu community in Pakistan,” Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, head of the Pakistan Hindu Council and a ruling party lawmaker, told Germany’s dpa news agency.

    “This is not the first incident of its kind, unfortunately intolerance towards religious minorities has been growing in Pakistan for the last five years, with more frequent attacks on places of worship,” said Hindu rights activist Kapil Dev.

    In July, a mob attacked the construction site of the first Hindu temple in the capital, Islamabad.

  • Nawaz won’t return, PML-N lawmakers won’t resign: Sheikh Rasheed

    After the Pakistan People’s Party expressed its reluctance to quit the national and provincial assemblies, Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed commented that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) too will follow suit and step back from its decision to quit parliament.

    In a conversation with the media, he talked about the Senate elections and the opposition’s participation in the polls. Rasheed said in spite of the PPP reportedly wanting Nawaz Sharif to come back, the PML-N supreme leader will stay in London.

    The PML-N members will not submit their resignations from the national or provincial assemblies as they have claimed, he claimed, adding that the party will even take part in the by-polls.

    He said the PML-N lawmakers are already agitated after the National Assembly speaker summoned two of them to verify their resignation letters that were allegedly sent to the secretariat on the respective official letterheads. He was referring to controversial resignation letters that the PML-N leaders claimed were submitted to the party, but they found their way to the speaker’s office.

    Rasheed also appreciated PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari’s political acumen, saying the former president was a good politician but PM Imran Khan was doing better than him.

    Zardari had recently suggested that the PDM should focus on its fight against the government instead of dictating each other on how to go about it.

    He had made made these comments in an apparent reference to the calls for resignations supported by the PML-N and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

  • Buzdar tells DCs to promote ‘qawali’, wants pictures of programmes

    Buzdar tells DCs to promote ‘qawali’, wants pictures of programmes

    As Punjab grapples with coronavirus outbreak and poor economic situation, the provincial government has asked its deputy commissioners to promote ‘qawali’ in the province.

    The News reported that Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has directed the DCs to have qawali performance in their respective areas and also promote them on cable networks.

    In addition, these civil servants have also been asked to send weekly reports to the Chief Minister’s Office about the concerts.

    It reported “a regular monitoring mechanism” has been devised and the CM wants the DCs to send his office the pictures of the programmes as well.

    The report claimed that the order to promote qawalis in the province might have come from Banigala — residence of PM Imran Khan where he lives with his spouse Bushra Bibi.

    The chief minister has faced a lot of criticism for his inability to run the province. During the two-year tenure of Buzdar, there has been a decline in almost departments of the provincial government.

    During his rule, at least six police chief of the province have been changed, five chief secretaries have been shown the door, but things have remained the same.

    However, despite all the odds, the PM has decided to stick with Buzdar and said he would emerge as the best chief minister of Punjab.

  • Govt says will cancel Nawaz’s passport on Feb 16

    Govt says will cancel Nawaz’s passport on Feb 16

    In a bid to bring former prime minister Nawaz Sharif back to Pakistan, the federal government will cancel his passport on Feb 16, said Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed on Wednesday.

    Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, the minister said that the passport of the ex-PM will be revoked owing to his refusal to return to Pakistan.

    Nawaz had left for London for a medical check-up last year after his health deteriorated in jail. The ex-premier, who was convicted in two graft cases, has refused to return since.

    Rasheed also said that now people will be able to obtain visas for any country online.

    It may be noted that the interior ministry’s decision to revoke the passport of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supreme leader came two months after a request by the National Accountability Bureau.

    According to Geo, NAB had sought cancellation of the passport and the CNIC of the ex-PM in OCt. “During the course of proceedings, the said accused [Nawaz] deliberately absented himself from the court and after the due process…whenever accused is arrested, he be produced before the court.”

    “In view thereof, copies of the said court order and perpetual non-bailable warrant of arrest are forwarded for processing of blacklisting/cancellation of the passport and blockage / impounding of CNIC of the accused through the Ministry of Interior,” NAB said in an order.

  • Balochistan govt halts Gwadar fencing after backlash

    Balochistan govt halts Gwadar fencing after backlash

    After backlash, the Balochistan government has decided to halt work on the fencing of Gwadar until a consensus is reached on the issue.

    Home Minister Mir Zia Lango said that Chief Minister Jam Kamal has ordered the authorities to stop the process amid criticism by the locals. He said that a parliamentary delegation would give its recommendation to the chief minister and the government would address the concerns of the locals first and then move ahead with the project.

    The process will move forward after the consultation with the people of Gwadar, he said, adding that the apprehensions of the public were of foremost importance. “The provincial government headed by CM Kamal is working for the betterment of people,” he added.

    The fencing of the city was criticised by local and national politicians, who termed the process discriminatory.

    Pakistan People’s Party leader Raza Rabbani had likened it to the Berlin Wall. “In an era when the Berlin Wall fell, and here the city is being divided in the name of security. It has raised serious concern among people of the area,” he had added.

  • Hamid Mir says Khawaja Asif’s arrest proves ‘someone is really scared’

    Hamid Mir says Khawaja Asif’s arrest proves ‘someone is really scared’

    Senior journalist Hamid Mir has said that the arrest if Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Khawaja Asif showed that someone was “really scared”.

    In a tweet, Mir said Asif presented himself for the arrest “with a smile and he will come back from the jail with a smile on his face”. “His arrest only proves that someone is really scared and worried,” he said, without taking any names.

    On Tuesday, Asif was taken into custody in the backdrop of an ongoing investigation into allegations of him possessing assets beyond known sources of income to the tune of whopping Rs260 million. PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb said he was arrested from near PML-N general secretary Ahsan Iqbal’s house.

    Mir had also commented on the arrest yesterday. He had said that the former foreign minister knew he would be arrested and had even made preparations beforehand for what he considered an “eventuality”. “He had prepared a bag as well and would say that the NAB would arrest him soon,” said Mir.

    In Oct this year, Asif had alleged that Prime Minister Imran Khan wanted to harm him and his wife by using his political opponents.

    Speaking on a TV show, the PML-N leader had claimed the prime minister wanted his rivals to hold a protest outside his residence, target him in a road accident, and harass his wife by forcing her out of the vehicle.

    Asif had alleged that the PM desired to get him beaten up or implicate in a narcotics case in order to teach him a lesson. He had said that he wanted to raise these issues in the National Assembly, but he was not allowed by the NA speaker to talk.