Azma Bukhari calls Faisal Vawda ‘mental patient’, ‘cheap Shah Rukh Khan’

Punjab Information Minister Azma Bukhari took a personal jab at Senator Faisal Vawda, calling him a mental patient.

“He [Vawda] is a mental patient. He neither has a political party nor has a political background and he wanders about like a cheap Shah Rukh Khan,” Azma said during a press conference held in Lahore on Tuesday.

She further said that one should feel pity and not respond to those questions of "mental patients" who have to act out or say controversial things to stay politically alive.

The minister’s response followed a journalist's question about the recent remarks of Senator Faisal Vawda, criticising the Punjab government over its silence during the Pak-India clashes.

"During the war environment, we saw that Faisal Vawda was nowhere to be seen. Later, instantly he came out of the cave and initiated criticism against the Punjab government,” a journalist asked.

Vawda had raised questions on a television show about Chief Minister (CM) Punjab Maryam Nawaz’s led provincial government and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif’s silence during the military clash between India and Pakistan.

He said that Nawaz Sharif maintained a “criminal silence” while the “TikTok provincial government’s” silence was also widely felt.

“We have never questioned the patriotism of anyone, be it Nawaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari or Imran Khan,” Vawda said, adding that the meaningless silence has “hurt Pakistanis.”

On Maryam Nawaz’s recent comment, which she made during an address at an event in Faisalabad, attributing the development of the JF-17 Thunder aircraft to her father, Vawda decried the statement.

“Pakistan Air Force is the only force that has been manufacturing their own aircraft, and you are claiming to make the JF-17 jet,” he said incredulously.