Ex-PM Kakar and PML-N’s Abbasi engage in verbal spat over wheat import scandal

After the ‘wheat import scandal’ opened a new debate and led to a high-level investigation by the federal government, former interim Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar and a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) exchanged harsh words in a local hotel in Islamabad on the issue.

“You (Abbasi) and PML-N will hide your faces if I (decide) to talk about (the issue) of Form 47,” Kakar said.

“Have you come to arrest me?” the former prime minister asked.

Reacting to the ex-prime minister’s comments, Abbasi claimed that he had spoken the truth on the said issue during a television programme.

The form 47-jibe refers to the allegations of manipulation by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and other parties regarding the manipulation of results in the February 8 polls through the above-mentioned form of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), which is in essentially amounted to a provisional consolidated constituency result without postal ballots at the polls.

The PTI has time and again alleged that the poll results of Form 47s were tampered with and that the actual results were reflected in Form 45s, which recorded the number of votes cast at a polling station and how many votes a candidate got from that polling station.

The bitter exchange between Kakar and Abbasi followed their fallout over the wheat import scandal that has put the Center and Punjab governments in a difficult position.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has constituted an inquiry committee, headed by Minister Kamran Ali Afzal, to probe wheat imports last year despite a “bumper crop” that led to a surplus of wheat stocks, preventing the governments of Balochistan and Punjab from harvesting the crop. can buy more from the farmers.

Because the provincial governments do not purchase wheat, the wheat is sold at a lower price than the official rate – a matter of great concern to farmers.

The stock surplus is attributed to the interim government’s decision, led by Kakar, to allow import of 2,758,226,226 tonnes of wheat worth Rs225.783 billion till February 2024.

However, former Prime Minister Kakar, during an interview, ruled out his role in the prevailing crisis and stressed that “it is not the job of a Prime Minister to monitor wheat production”.

Commenting on the decision to import wheat, he said that only 3.4 million tonnes of the said crop was imported while the deficit stood at 4 million tonnes.

Sources said Geo news that the Ministry of National Food Security had informed Shehbaz’s cabinet that 28.18 million tons of wheat had been produced last year and that the caretaker government had decided to import another 2.45 million tons.

According to statistics, a total of 3,449,436 tonnes of wheat worth Rs282.975 billion was imported during the tenure of the transitional government and the Shehbaz-led government during the current fiscal year till March.

The federal one government also dismissed Captain (Retd) Muhammad Asif, the Federal Secretary of the National Food Safety and Research Division, from his post over the wheat import issue.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Fakhr Alam Irfan, a Grade 22 officer of the Pakistan Administrative Service, has been appointed as the new federal secretary of the National Food Safety and Research Division.