SUKKUR: Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah has asked the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to accept the Election Commission of Pakistan`s (ECP) decision to dismiss disqualification references against Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leaders Imran Khan and Jehangir Tareen and not to challenge them in the Supreme Court.

Mr Shah was talking to journalists after inaugurating an MRI machine and laying the foundation stone of an orthopaedic department in the Civil Hospital here on Saturday. He said that challenging the ECP decision in the apex court would be tantamount to putting pressure on the court in connection with the Panamagate case.

The Pakistan Peoples Party leader said that Pakistan had been isolated in the world because of the government failure to devise foreign policy.

He said that Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had reservations over the process of the national population census and urged the federal government to allaythe reservations.

He said that the Sindh government feared that many of the rural areas would be missed and aliens settled in the province would also be counted as locals during the exercise.

The country`s debt had tremendously increased since the PML-N`s assumed power, Mr Shah said and asked how the economy of a country depending on loan could improve.

He said that the arrest of Dr Farooq Sattar was not a good omen as his Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan claimed that it had no relations with the MQM-London. However, he said in the same breath that the two parties were like twin children who were quarrelling over assets in Pakistan and London.

He said that before coming to power, the PML-N had promised to end electricity loadshedding but it still continued throughout the country.

In Sukkur, he said, a children hospital would be constructed soon at a cost of Rs3 billion and work on a cancer hospital would start in two weeks. As many as 400 to 500 doctors, paramedics and other staff would be recruited on the basis of merit to run the hospitals. Besides, he added, the federal government had been asked to build an 800-bed hospital in the city.

Mr Shah said that the annual budget of the Civil Hospital had been increased from Rs60million to Rs200m and, subsequently, patients were being provided medicines of better quality.