LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz on Tuesday sent a Rs5 billion defamation notice to Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Chaudhry Salik Hussain over allegations ofcorruption against her government, demanding that he retract his remarks.
During an appearance on a talk show on Monday, the PML-Q leader had praised former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi, and criticised the incumbent provincial administration, alleging that political considerations were increasingly influencing development priorities and the allocation of public funds.
He claimed he regularly heard complaints of corruption in Punjab, and alleged that a disproportionate share of the province’s development budget was being channelled towards Lahore.
Addressing a ceremony in Attock on Tuesday, CM Maryam said: ‘There is a federal minister ... somebody sent me his statement about corruption in Punjab.
Today, I am sending him a defamation notice.
She said she would not bear ‘false allegations of corruption’. ‘If you have evidence, bring it forth; otherwise, Iwill drag you to court,’ she said, asking Chaudhry Salik why he remained a minister in a government that he considered corrupt.
The chief minister went on to say that the reason behind the anger of the PML-Q leader was neither a matter of corruption nor progress. The issue, she said, was that she changed the deputy commissioner of Gujrat a few days ago, whereas Mr Salik had wanted a DC of his choice to be appointed.
‘I will not allow anyone to interfere in the will of the people,’ she said. Maryam Nawaz also took exception to Mr Salik’s comments calling Parvez Elahi the ‘bestever chief minister’ in Punjab.
‘The Gujrat that Pervez Elahi handed me I went there about two years ago and it was raining. Believe me... the water was up to here,’ she said, gesturing to her neck.
‘My Land Cruiser was completely submerged,’ she said. ‘It looked less like Gujrat and more like a village ... now, go and look at Gujrat. Now, when it rains, the rainwater doesn’t accumulate. That work was not done by the Chaudhrys.
Subsequently, the PML-N posted on X that a defamation notice had been sent to Mr Salik, ARYNews host Naeem Ashraf Butt and the channel’s chairman.The notice said that during the interview, Mr Butt had ‘introduced and led the discussion’ regarding alleged corruption in Punjab, while Mr Salik ‘proceeded to make sweeping and baseless allegations against the provincial administration’.
The notice said the minister’s remarks were not just an expression of disagreement with policy or ‘ordinary political criticism’, but conveyed ‘serious imputations’ of widespread corruption in the province.
The notice called on them to retract the remarks, publish an ‘unconditional and unequivocal apology and clarification’ and ‘remove or suitably correct’ the portions of the interview in question. It also demanded a sum of Rs5bn in damages.
The notice gave a period of seven days for these actions and warned that failure to comply would lead to legalproceedings.Meanwhile, reactingto CMMaryam’s comments, Mr Salik said he was sticking to his statement. Speaking to reporters at Parliament House, he said: ‘God save us from pride and arrogance’.