Pakistan Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Friday said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will be appointing a new army chief in a "day or two" as he believes that further delay over the appointment will not be appropriate.
He leveled the allegation while addressing the long march from his Lahore residence, The News International newspaper reported. Khan claimed that Shehbaz violated the country's Official Secrecy Act by consulting his elder brother, Nawaz Sharif on the new COAS appointment.
Taking to Twitter, the Additional Directorate General of Public Information of the Indian Army said, "General Manoj Pande #COAS visited Ecole Military School at #Paris. #COAS interacted with Director, Centre for Doctrine & Command Teaching #CDEC & addressed the Senior Staff Officers'
In an exclusive conversation with Dawn, Khan said all going was going between him and the establishment until his government failed to convict those he alleged of corruption and his party refused to appoint their preferred choice of Punjab chief minister.
During the visit, Army Chief Manoj Pande will lay a wreath at Neuve Chapelle Indian Memorial, which commemorates the sacrifices of 4,742 Indian soldiers during the first world war.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief said that the criteria for the next army chief's appointment should be based on "merit." "Whoever fits the merit, should be appointed the army chief," said Imran Khan via video link, during the PTI's long march, as quoted by Geo News.
Sharif, 70, was allowed to leave for London in 2019 after the Lahore High Court granted him permission to go abroad for medical treatment. He has since been in the UK and commanded the reigns of the party from there.
The situation in Eastern Ladakh is stable but unpredictable and inspite of winter onset there is no significant reduction of our force strength on Line of Actual Control (LAC), Army Chief General Manoj Pande said on Saturday.
Criticising Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for consulting Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif, Khan said that he went to a house "made of stolen money" to meet a "convict" in London, Geo News reported.
This visit to London is the third such trip since he became Prime Minister in April. The Dawn newspaper reported that this visit comes two weeks before the end of Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa's tenure on November 29.