SIALKOT: Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif says the country will be back on the path of progress and development within a few months due to prudent economic policies of the incumbent government.

Addressing the PML-N workers’ convention in Sialkot on Sunday, Khawaja Asif said that we are striving to stabilize the national economy since we came into power. He said Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif is taking practical steps to control inflation and high electricity bills.

The Minister regretted that during the previous era, the media was massively used to defame the opposition and false cases were registered against PML-N leaders.

Berating former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, Khawaja Asif said that the former did not rise to power suddenly, saying "planners" had decided to impose him on the state.

Khawaja Asif said Imran Khan always stabbed his friends in the back. Referring to Imran Khan’s criticism of the institutions, the defence minister said he "slams his benefactor from dawn to dusk".

The deposed PM Imran Khan said that he made a mistake by granting the extension to General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa, but on the other hand, he offered the then-army chief an extension to his tenure for life.

Imran Khan was brought to power under a plot, Asif said, adding that after destroying the young generation, the PTI chief was demanding elections.

Dubbing Khan an “experiment”, the federal minister said that the former was launched in 2012-13 under an “agenda”. “It was a wrong and disastrous experiment,” he added.

Referring to the alleged differences between the PTI and the PML-Q over the dissolution of the assemblies, the minister challenged Imran Khan to dissolve the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assemblies.