ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) secretary general Ahsan Iqbal on Tuesday said record increase in inflation took place in two and a half years of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government.

Talking to the media after appearing before an accountability court here in Narowal Sports City Complex Project (NSCCP) case, he quoted Imran Khan who said he is proud of two and a half years performance of the government.

The PTI has laid not a single brick despite taking billion of rupees in loans during its tenure, he said.

Iqbal said the PTI government has crashed the country’s development during its two and half year tenure.

He said the entire administration in Punjab was busy in money making. PTI members themselves said they have never seen such a situation in Punjab before, Ahsan said.

The PML-N leader said the situation has become so worse that the government had to call in the army for implementation of Covid-19 standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Where is the civil administration? The same civil administration had worked in our tenure, he said.

About his case, he said budget for NSCCP had been approved by the federal cabinet, National Assembly, National Economic Council but another project (Kartarpur project) in the same district which is a national project and we support it but neither a PC-1 has been prepared for it, nor it was approved by the Central Development Working Party (CDWP), nor its bidding was carried out as per Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PEPRA) rules and regulations.

He said Kartarpur project was completed at the cost of Rs17 billion and now they were taking ex-post facto approval of the project from the federal cabinet.

“Is this not an open contradiction? I was imprisoned even after completing all legal formalities of NSCCP,” he said, adding that on the other hand, no regulation has been met on Kartarpur project and no one was accountable for it.

Iqbal said questions were raised about Lt-Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa (retd) personal matters and here former prime Ministers and judge of Supreme Court were answerable as well as we were facing court cases while no one can ask question from him [the PM].

He asked Imran Khan that why Shehzad Akbar, special assistant to Prime Minister on Accountability, who used to wave papers against PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif in press conferences did not present before the court.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021