Punjab minister tells Salik Hussain to prove corruption claims or apologise

Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari on Wednesday challenged Federal Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Chaudhry Salik Hussain to produce evidence for his corruption allegations against Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz or apologise, saying he holds public office and cannot keep making accusations without proof.

Bokhari said Salik is a federal minister and part of the same government, and that he should answer the legal notice the chief minister issued to him over the remarks. She said changing his position again and again would not free him of responsibility.

The provincial minister accused Salik of shifting his account of whether he recommended the appointment of the deputy commissioner of Gujrat. According to Bokhari, the federal minister accepted a day earlier that he had made the recommendation and has since taken a different line. She also said Salik's own brother had rejected his allegations.

Defending the Punjab government, Bokhari said Maryam Nawaz had started and completed development projects worth trillions of rupees in two years, and that the government's critics had failed to establish corruption of a single rupee against her. She said Salik had himself conceded that he did not have evidence for his claims.

The exchange follows a widening dispute between Punjab's provincial leadership and the federal minister over alleged corruption in the province, which sharpened after Maryam Nawaz served the legal notice on him.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Wednesday that he found Salik's allegations difficult to understand. In a statement on X, Asif called Salik a respected political figure and said he held his family in high regard, but questioned the timing and political intentions behind the criticism of the Punjab government. He said corruption remained one of Pakistan's biggest challenges.

ProPakistani reported separately that Maryam Nawaz responded to criticism over alleged AI-generated images used to show development work in Narowal. The other reports on the dispute did not carry that response.