Category: Politics

News stories of Politics, for the topics that matter the most to young professionals and college students, political news reported with a different angle.

  • Shehbaz ko dhoti nahin pasand lekin Nawaz ko achi lagti hai, says Rohale Asghar

    Shehbaz ko dhoti nahin pasand lekin Nawaz ko achi lagti hai, says Rohale Asghar

    Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) senior leader Sheikh Rohale Asghar recently appeared in an interview on WE News in which he revealed that PM Shehbaz didn’t like his traditional dress (Dhoti kurta).

    “PM Shehbaz strongly complains about my clothes and even told me to change the attire but I refused,” said the PML-N leader.

    He further said, “I’m not a servant of Shehbaz Sharif. I am Sheikh Rohale Asghar son of Muhammad Asghar and I have my own identity.”

    Asghar also stated that Nawaz Sharif likes his dressing style but Shehbaz Sharif has complained to him multiple times about his laacha.

    Does this mean that Shehbaz Sharif never wears a dhoti? That would be strange as after all, it is the traditional rural attire of the province he governed twice.

  • Missing Kashmiri poet Ahmad Farhad meets family

    Missing Kashmiri poet Ahmad Farhad meets family

    After the Islamabad High Court (IHC) was informed about the whereabouts of missing Kashmiri poet Ahmad Farhad, his family met him at a police station in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Wednesday.

    Earlier, the Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP), Mansoor Usman Awan, told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that Kasmiri poet Ahmad Farhad had been found in the custody of Azad Jammu and Kashmir police.

    Farhad’s wife Urooj Zainab requested the IHC  to identify, investigate, and prosecute those responsible for her husband’s disappearance.

    Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani heard the petition filed by Urooj Zainab, while human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari is Zainab’s counsel in the case.

    A report by the DhirKot Kashmir police station was also presented before the court.

    During a hearing held on May 21, the AGP assured the court of efforts on the safe recovery of the missing poet.

    “[We] will do whatever it takes. [We] will rescue and recover [Farhad],” the AGP said while addressing the IHC judge and taking the responsibility to look into the matter.

    However, Justice Kayani directed the AGP to make sure that “no one gets picked up from Islamabad.”

  • NAB raids Bahria Town office Rawalpindi

    NAB raids Bahria Town office Rawalpindi

    A team of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has raided Bahria Town’s Rawalpindi office on Tuesday, initiating an investigation into irregularities in the property conglomerate.

    SAMAA TV reported that an investigation has been initiated on Bahria Enclave land, and the land, which was given by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for a zoo, is now under inspection. The anti-graft watchdog team raided the Bahria Town office in Rawalpindi to take records into custody.

    Informed sources told SAMAA that the NAB team stayed at the Bahria Town office for more than two hours, confiscating crucial data, including files of multiple housing projects and other important records.

    During the raid, the anti-graft watchdog team retrieved digital evidence and data from computers.

    Police officials and elite personnel were also with the NAB team during the raid.

    The NAB team will investigate the land of Bahria Enclave and wrongdoings in the attainment of all the lands of Bahria Town.

  • PTI distances itself from Khan’s 1971 breakup of Pakistan post

    PTI distances itself from Khan’s 1971 breakup of Pakistan post

    Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan distanced the party from former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s controversial social media post on the 1971 civil war and the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report, saying the post should be seen in a “political context”.

    “The context and comparison that we drew with 1971 was in a political context and not otherwise — nothing about the army,” said Barrister Gohar in an interview with digital news outlet Azaad Urdu.

    On May 26, Imran Khan’s account on X shared a video about the separation of East Pakistan along with a quote attributed to him: “Every Pakistani should study the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report and get to know who was the true traitor, General Yahya Khan or Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.”

    PTI Chairman said Khan was in prison and “does not approve every video or context”.

    In the video, it was argued that the people’s mandate was not respected and the former military dictator was the one responsible for the country’s breakup.

    The footage also showed the atrocities committed by the Pakistani military during the civil war when it conducted Operation Searchlight in 1971.

    The post garnered backlash from fellow political leaders. PPP Senator Sherry Rehman had said the post was “alarming” and the PTI was “continuously fueling the narrative of hatred and incitement” by comparing Imran to Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.

    Netizens also discovered an old tweet in which Imran Khan had disparagingly compared Nawaz Sharif to Mujib, a complete contradiction of his latest tweet.

  • Kitany main parhi aaj ki chuti Pakistanion ko ?

    Kitany main parhi aaj ki chuti Pakistanion ko ?

    Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced a public holiday today to celebrate Youm-e-Takbeer. Everything in the country is at a standstill, and the annual exams in schools have been delayed.

    Shehbaz Sharif announced the holiday to commemorate the day when Pakistan conducted a successful nuclear test in Chaghai in 1998.

    Provincial authorities postponed matriculation exams scheduled for today due to the public holiday.

    All government departments, educational institutions, the Stock Exchange, and courts are closed across the country due to the holiday.

    Pakistan, which is already suffering from inflation and has a stable economy, gets 120 public holidays annually. Due to a single day off, the national GDP faces a 1-2% loss, which equals more than Rs 100 billion.
    Economic analyst Khuram Shehzad said that a public holiday affects the national exchequer between $1.1 and $1.3 billion. He also added that the impact could be bigger if the holiday is “sudden.”

  • Government officials likely to get a raise in upcoming budget 2024-2025

    Government officials likely to get a raise in upcoming budget 2024-2025

    The federal government is currently considering salary increases for government employees in the range of 10 percent to 15 percent in the upcoming budget for 2024-2025, Geo News reported.

    The government intends to increase revenue generation to strike a successful deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under Extended Fund Facility (EFF) at a range of $6 billion.

    The Ministry of Finance wants to raise the salary by just 10 percent and there is another consideration to increase the monetization of cars by 20 percent to 25 percent for higher grade officers like grades 20, 21, and 22.

    The monetary policy was introduced in 2012 for the basic purpose of reducing the burden on government expenditure, which was “in line with the observance of austerity measures and to eliminate misuse of official vehicles.”

    The government is also considering pension reforms in the next budget including putting tax on pensioners who withdraw over Rs 100,000 per month.

  • KP, Centre agree to work together after long spat

    KP, Centre agree to work together after long spat

    The provincial government of Khyeber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and the federal government have finally agreed to work together after months of heated arguments over arrears, deciding to put differences aside for the betterment of the people of Pakistan, Geo reported on Monday.

    The development came during a meeting in Islamabad between the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Ali Amin Gandapur and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi. The Federal Minister for Energy, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari, also attended the meeting.

    After that, they also held joint press conferences.

    Addressing a joint presser, following a “meaningful” dialogue, CM Gandapur said: “The federal and provincial institutions will work together. [We] will work together to remove the causes of line losses.”

    The federal government and the KP government are clashing and disagreeing over multiple issues. Power cuts in KP are one of the major reasons for the spats between the Centre and KP, with Gandapur even threatening to take control of the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) due to excessive power outages in the province.

  • Police arrests 26 people and books over 400 for mob violence in Sargodha

    Police arrests 26 people and books over 400 for mob violence in Sargodha

    Sargodha police has arrested 26 people for mob violence and attempting to lynch a Christian man on Saturday while registering a case against 44 nominated and 300/400 unidentified suspects.

    The case was registered on behalf of the State of Pakistan with clauses included in the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997.

    However, the police also registered a blasphemy case against the Christian man who was seriously injured in the mob attack.

    A worker of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) filed the blasphemy case.

    On May 25, a violent mob tried to lynch the Christian man. Multiple viral videos on social media show horrific scenes of violent mobs damaging, setting fire and looting the property.

    Station House Officer (SHO) Shahid Iqbal and other police personnel at the scene rescued the man from the burning house but when he was brought out, the mob swarmed in and attacked him.

    The FIR also alleges that women were also a part of the crowd, inciting violence.

  • ‘Over my dead body’; Malik Riaz says won’t be pressurised

    ‘Over my dead body’; Malik Riaz says won’t be pressurised

    Bahria Town Chairman and real estate tycoon Malik Riaz on Sunday alleged that he was being immensely pressurised for “political motives” but will not bow down before anyone.

    In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Riaz wrote that there has been a “recurring pattern of victimization against me and my business for introducing state-of-the-art projects in Pakistan.”

    It should be noted that Malik Riaz did not name anyone despite complaining he was being pushed to the wall.

    Dawn News reported that it reached out to numerous political experts and politicians but “nearly everyone was reluctant to comment on his ‘sad tale’.”

    It is, however, widely believed that Riaz was referring to the Al Qadir Trust/University case, which was filed by NAB against PTI founder Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi.

    The case alleges that PM Imran Khan and his spouse obtained land spread over hundreds of kanals from Bahria Town Ltd to legalise Rs50 billion, the same amount which was returned to Pakistan by UK authorities.

    Reacting to the tycoon’s statement, former president and PTI leader Arif Alvi asserted that the pressure cooker will ‘burst one of these days’.

  • Pakistan calls on Afghanistan to hand over TTP terrorists involved in attack on Chinese

    Pakistan calls on Afghanistan to hand over TTP terrorists involved in attack on Chinese

    Pakistan on Sunday demanded that the Taliban government in Afghanistan hand over Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorists involved in the Besham attack on Chinese nationals.

    “Whether Afghanistan try the terrorists [in the court of law] or not, it should hand over the militants to Pakistan,” said Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi in a press conference.

    Pakistan has recently been urging Afghan authorities to keep a check on TTP infiltration from its side of the borders and relations with the neighbor have also soured in the past two years.

    At least six people including five Chinese nationals were killed after a suicide bomber rammed into the bus transporting the staff working on the Dasu hydropower project in Bisham, Shangla district, in March this year.

    Pakistani authorities said that the TTP operated the Besham terror attack from inside Afghanistan.

    Responding to a question, Naqvi said that Pakistan’s government had contacted the interim authorities in Kabul but “good results are not coming from there.”