Pakistan Peoples Party leader Sadia Javed has said that Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz faces corruption allegations from her own ally minister, Dunya News reported on Sunday.
Speaking to the media at the Lahore Press Club, Javed, who is also a Sindh government spokesperson, said the debate on creating new provinces was ongoing, but no formal paperwork had emerged so far. She added that the PPP would soon establish its place in Punjab as well.
“We are not accusing Maryam Nawaz of corruption; rather, her own allied minister is levelling allegations against her,” she said.
The allegation she referred to was made by federal minister Chaudhry Salik Hussain, a Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid leader and an ally of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, who said on a private television talk show on 2 November that he heard stories about corruption in Punjab on a daily basis.
Hussain, the federal minister for overseas Pakistanis, acknowledged at the time that he did not have evidence to substantiate the allegations, according to reports of the programme.
Maryam Nawaz responded by announcing that she would send a defamation notice to Hussain, seeking five billion rupees in damages, and challenged him to produce evidence for his claims.
Addressing a ceremony in Attock, the chief minister asked why Hussain continued to serve as a minister if he believed the provincial government was so corrupt, and said he should substantiate his allegations or answer in court.
Hussain stood by his remarks, saying: “I stand by my statement. Corruption is taking place in Punjab.” He rejected the chief minister’s suggestion that his criticism was linked to the appointment of a deputy commissioner in Gujrat, saying no such request had been made by him.
Javed also said the PPP was providing one million homes to the public free of cost, not on loans, and that the party was introducing a Youth Card in Sindh.
On the K-IV project for supplying water to Karachi, she said the federal government was supposed to build it, but the project had been delayed.
The PPP leader said corruption was a problem across the country, and added that Pakistan’s economy could not grow unless energy prices were reduced.
The exchange of allegations between the PPP and the PML-N comes amid a wider political debate in Punjab and Sindh over development performance and administrative models, with leaders of both parties trading criticism in public.
