Bilawal's decision to shun protests prudent: Rashid.

LAHORE -- Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid says PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has become prudent as he has decided not to hold fruitless protest rallies and public meetings and planned to take up legal and constitutional path by weighing options of moving no-confidence motion in parliament.

Mr Rashid was also quick to say that neither the MQM nor the PML-Q was withdrawing from being coalition partners of the government.

'You will see that the PTI will get an additional seat in Punjab in the upcoming Senate elections,' the interior minister said at a press conference at the Chief Minister Secretariat on Saturday.

Chief Minister Usman Buzdar and Federal Religious Affairs Minister Noorul Haq Qadri were also supposed to accompany Mr Rashid at the press conference but at the last minute, both kept themselves away.

The interior minister said the federal and the Punjab governments had agreed to give a free hand to the PDM to go for its long march as was the case of its protest outside the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) provided it would not take law into its hands.

'If anyone will take law into his hands, he will be dealt with an iron hand,' he warned.

He lauded the opposition parties' decision of taking part in the upcoming Senate elections and by-elections and furthermore postponing their decision of resigning en masse from parliament.

Addressing Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the interior minister asserted that neither this government had any agenda of recognising Israel, nor did it want to bring any amendment to the Khatam-i-Nabuwat law.

He also said Prime Minister Imran Khan was more concerned about the Kashmir independence struggle and served the Kashmir cause more effectively by raising the issue at the United Nations and other forums.

Referring to the Broadsheet case, the minister said detailed facts and figures of the case would be dug out in the next 45 to 90 days and then a decision would be taken at a higher level. 'Let's see which way this case will go,' he said.

Responding to criticism against the appointment of former Supreme Court judge Azmat Saeed to head the Broadsheet case inquiry, the interior minister sarcastically said whether the opposition wanted to appoint former Supreme...