LAHORE: Punjab Assembly opposition leader and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Core Committee member Mahmoodur Rashid has challenged the attorney general’s report presented in the Supreme Court detailing Rs547 billion losses the government claims to have suffered due to the Islamabad sit-ins.

“It’s a fictitious report based on fake data,” Mr Rashid said in a statement here on Sunday.

He, however, would not explain how the particulars of AG’s report were false.

Referring to the AG’s submission that the government spent an extra Rs130 million on maintenance of law and order, Mr Rashid said the amount was less than Rs224 million spent on acquiring bulletproof cars for the prime minister.

He also declared as mala fide the report that 200,000 children could not attend schools because of PTI, PAT demonstrations. The factual position was, Mr Rashid claimed, that these children had to stay away from schools because of hundreds of containers blocking various roads of the capital.

Mr Rashid wondered why both the prime minister and the chief minister never bothered about children’s absence from schools because of the containers “placed to seal the whole province”.

Mr Rashid said the government had issued Rs500 billion to clear the circular debt of IPPs, while Rs37 billion were misappropriated in the name of Nandipur Power Project.

He said Punjab’s businessmen suffered Rs100 billion losses due to unscheduled power and gas loadshedding. Why the government did not see this and why it turned a blind eye to the mismanagement and corruption, he asked.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2014