SALKOT  -  Senior leader Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) and for­mer Federal Minister for De­fence Khawaja Muhammad Asif has said that party supremo Nawaz Sharif will return to a historic welcome on October 21. 

Addressing a press confer­ence, he said that workers across Pakistan were making prepara­tions to welcome him. He said Nawaz would play an active role in Pakistani politics. “He will be­come the prime minister of the country for the fourth time and resolve all problems,” he added. He claimed that the PMLN ten­ure from 2013 to 2017 was the best period in the country. “In 2017 when Nawaz Sharif was in government, a unit of electric­ity cost Rs11, the dollar Rs100, petrol Rs65/litre, roti Rs5, flour Rs35, sugar Rs52 and 20 million people were brought above the poverty line,” he maintained.

“Nawaz Sharif provided jobs to 6.5m people. The PML-N govern­ment installed the cheapest pow­er plants in the world in Pakistan and added 17000 megawatts of electricity to the national grid station and now we are facing loadshedding again,” he main­tained. Asif said that the PML-N had saved the country from ter­rorism and made it a cradle of peace. He said that Nawaz Sharif had made the country a nuclear power and economically inde­pendent. “If his rule had not been ended, there would not have been such inflation and the electricity bills would not have been so high, because at that time the govern­ment had generated thousands of megawatts of electricity which ended loadshedding,” he added.

He said that Nawaz Sharif was implicated in the Panama case while his name was not there. “Then, he was declared incompetent for not taking sal­ary from his son and the right of appeal was also taken away from him. During the four-year tenure of the PTI, the country’s economy was destroyed. In our 15 months, we tried to correct it with allies, but no significant success was achieved, but we are determined that the coun­try will definitely succeed in coming out of the darkness,” he maintained. He said that Nawaz Sharif would lead the coun­try again on the path to devel­opment and prosperity. “The PMLN’s achievements would have continued had Nawaz Sharif not prevented from being re-elected and there would have been no inflation, no high elec­tricity bills, no expensive petrol and no terrorism,” he claimed.