Hours after Indian Air Force conducted an air strike against the terror bases run by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in Pakistan, the rattled Imran Khan regime on Tuesday announced that a joint sitting Parliament will be convened to show solidarity with the armed forces.
“A joint parliamentary session will take place,” Geo news quoted the Pakistan minister of state for parliamentary affairs Ali Muhammad Khan as saying.
Senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leaders Khursheed Shah and Sherry Rehman had called for a joint session of Parliament to be convened immediately.
The demand for a joint session figured in the National Assembly also with PML(Nawaz) leader Khawaja Asif, a former Defence Minister, also echoed similar sentiment.
Asif slammed the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for inviting Indian External Affairs Minister Minister Sushma Swaraj as a ‘guest of honour’ at an inaugural session of the OIC foreign ministers’ conclave scheduled on March 1 in Abu Dhabi.
He also said it is “not the time for political point-scoring” and maintained that all political differences should be shunned.
Former NA speaker and PML-N leader Ayaz Sadiq also called on the government to raise the issue of inviting Swaraj as “guest of honour” with OIC. “OIC cannot invite anybody to its meetings without consultations with member countries,” Sadiq said.
Even as the Imran Khan regime on Tuesday came under heavy attack from the opposition parties, most lawmakers in the National Assembly called for staying ‘united’ and showing solidarity with the Pak army.
Some opposition party MPs took on the government nonetheless with chants of ‘shame, shame’ which echoed in the National Assembly.
Prime Minister Imran Khan convened a special meeting of the National Security Committee which was attended among others by Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Later, briefing journalists Pak Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi accused India of “putting regional peace and stability at grave risk”.
He also said Islamabad had the “right to respond”.
