ISLAMABAD -  Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan Saturday said that impression being given about confrontation between the government and judiciary was wrong.

He also lashed out at his political opponents what he said that they are getting political mileage over the issue.

The government's reaction expressing sadness and regret over the statement of an honourable judge of Supreme Court does not mean that there was a confrontation between the government and the judiciary or both are on a collision course, said interior minister in a statement issued by the interior ministry.

While equating difference of opinion to collision and using every issue for getting political mileage actually reflects a mindset that wants to see collision and chaos rather than stability, he said while coming down hard on his political rivals - both PPP and PTI.

Justice Azamt Saeed Sheikh while hearing a suo motu case against remarks of PML-N Senator Nehal Hashmi had said: "Congratulations Attorney General; it seems that your government has joined the Sicilian mafia."

In response, the government in a statement said that the remarks of the judiciary were regretting and against judicial traditions and Supreme Court's code of ethics. This gave rise to wide spread speculations that perhaps there were widening rift between the government and judiciary. 

Chaudhry Nisar, while criticising his political opponents, said that unfortunately some people wanted to fan misunderstanding between the government and institutions and had made it a habit to create a hype on every issue through their statements and political point scoring for their political gains.  He said that these self-proclaimed guardians of judiciary and judges today had conveniently forgotten the way how institutions were subjected to ridicule and were humiliated during their tenure in the government. And how people holding highest offices used to ridicule judiciary and openly negated judgments, the minister said in a veiled reference to PPP.

The minister alleged that these were the same people who used to throw black paints on judges in order to stop them from giving their judgments, termed the verdicts as "shame", created a difference of Punjabi and non-Punjabi in the judiciary, promoted PCO judges and gave them the highest judicial positions. On the other hand, he said, those people are also included in this group who only accepted verdicts that they considered as favourable or which suited them.

He said that if it was not quite far that a larger bench of SC gave a verdict which was not accepted and was ridiculed also.  "Today the same people are trying to make mountain out of a molehill and overreacting over an issue on which the government showed immediate reaction and took disciplinary action against its party office-bearer, he said.  

The minister lashed out at PTI, saying that even leaders of that party were also shouting whose official spokesman a few days ago alleged judiciary and armed forces of rigging 2013 elections. He said no action was taken against that spokesperson, and wondered what name should be given to this dual standard.