Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz said on Saturday her party would not hold talks with the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on legislation or Senate elections. 

Addressing an anti-government gathering in Daska town in Sialkot District on Saturday evening, the PML-N leader said that opposition parties led by the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) would march on Islamabad and see the government in Faizabad. She described the upcoming by-election in Daska as a battle between the ruling PTI and the rival PML-N. 

Speaking on the occasion, Maryam paid tribute to jailed PML-N leader from Sialkot Khawaja Muhammad Asif and said he was being punished for remaining loyal to Nawaz Sharif. She said that Iftikharul Hasan Shah (also known as Zahray Shah), father of the PML-N candidate in the Daska by-election Syeda Nosheen Iftikhar, was a loyal soldier of Nawaz Sharif. She asked people to vote for the PML-N candidate in the February 19 by-election. 

Speaking to party workers and supporters, Maryam said that Prime Minister Imran Khan and his ‘selectors’ get panicked when people of Punjab stand up for their rights. She said that Nawaz Sharif had waged a war against those who stole the 2018 general elections. She said the PML-N was not at war with Imran Khan because he was an ‘adopted child’. She said that those involved in sugar and flour shortage and gas and power tariff hike were standing left and right to Imran Khan. She said that Punjab was left unattended after Nawaz Sharif and Shehbaz Sharif’s rule came to an end. 

Maryam said the incumbent government of the PTI abandoned the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and lost the foreign investment. She said the PTI-led Punjab government did not execute even a single development project in the entire province after departure of the PML-N government. She said that people of entire Punjab, rather Pakistan, were missing Nawaz Sharif and Shehbaz Sharif very badly. On this occasion, emotional-charged Maryam lost the context and attributed Amrita Pritam’s famous Punjabi poem ‎"Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu” to legendary Punjabi poet Waris Shah. She also recited some verses from the poem and dedicated these versus to herself, Nosheen and women of Punjab.