Chaudhry Nisar reacts to Pervaiz Rasheed's statement

ISLAMABAD: Reacting upon fellow party leader Pervaiz Rasheed’s recent statement, former interior minister and PML-N stalwart Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said that Rasheed should clarify as to what sort of help he or the party needed him when he was interior minister, ARY News reported.

Nisar’s spokesman, in a statement, said that if Pervaiz Rasheed is innocent then he should have asked his government to make the Dawn Leaks inquiry report public.

Former information minister Pervaiz Rasheed, who was ousted over the Dawn Leaks scandal, in an interview had said that some of the major decisions during PML-N’s term in power came against the party despite having its own interior ministry. He gave examples of Dawn Leaks issue, and WhatsApp scandal regarding the formation of Panamagate JIT.

Nisar, who was interior minister during all these developments, said that his fellow party leader should come clear on what sort of help he needed from his ministry, adding that only one member out of the whole Dawn Leaks inquiry committee member was under interior ministry.

Rasheed, in his interview, also said that he accepted his removal after Dawn Leaks scandal for the sake of democracy.

Then information minister, Pervaiz Rasheed had to resign from his position as Minister for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage in October 2016 after the infamous Dawn Leaks scandal.

“Evidence available so far points to a lapse on part of the information minister, who has been directed to step down from the office to enable holding of an independent and detailed inquiry,” a PM House statement issued with regard to his removal said.

The development came after the publication of a controversial story in a leading English daily which reported fabricated details of a high level civil-military meeting discussing the issue of Pakistan’s banned outfits.