Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday said the ruling PTI has “complete faith” in the Chaudhry family-led PML-Q – an important ally of the government – and claimed the “panicked” opposition has now realised about former premier Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s health.

“I think Mr Chaudhry [Shujaat] is a politician who has such political skills that might not anyone has and people who are suddenly thinking about his health are those who are worried,” PM Imran said while addressing the International Symposium on Pakistan’s Hydropower Development in Global Perspective in Islamabad.

The premier’s jibe was apparently at the opposition leaders, who in the last week met with the PML-Q leaders in an effort to secure a no-confidence move against PM in parliament. The multi-party confab, which includes PPP, PML-N, and JUI-F, has been trying to convince PTI allies to dislodge the incumbent government.

In the last week, such meetings had prompted responses from the federal ministers that were consistent on one statement that such attempts would fail.

Before PM Imran’s address at the event, Federal Minister for Water Resources Moonis Elahi in his speech had advised the ruling party not to panic with such hurdles. Elahi, who is a PML-Q leader, added it was part of their work to “welcome guests” upon their arrival at home. “We are political people and it is part of our work to meet politicians.”

PM Imran agreed. He was of the view that PTI members have become “battle-hardened” over the 25 years of the party’s struggle.

Amid the current political atmosphere, he added that the worried people were meeting with families of their lawmakers after 20 years of offering condolences.

‘Negligence cost us a lot’

In his speech, the prime minister also stressed on the need to establish dams, saying negligence on this issue since 1960 had “cost the country a lot” in terms of high electricity price and inflation.

“We wouldn’t have been facing such inflation if we had run hydroelectric projects,” he said, adding that every commodity became expensive when electricity was expensive.

He went on to say that lack of long term planning led to further problems in the country, stressing the need for water storage. “Fastest growing country in the world, China, thinks about long term planning, which is the reason of their success. They think about the future,” he said, “Not like us, who think about five years as if a project will be completed in five years then they will make it.”

He hailed his government for planning ahead than thinking about elections.

PM Imran further called for providing water access to provinces in order to tap their agriculture potential in view of the rising population.

“This decade of dams would double water storage capacity,” he said, adding that the clean electricity via water would also lower the impact of climate change. The premier also called for building tunnel technology that could also help in generating tourism.

On the Kalabagh Dam project, he alleged that anti-national forces were misguiding the people in Sindh by telling them that their “water will be stolen”.

“So we have to run a complete campaign to tell them scientifically that they will have no harm when the Kalabagh Dam will be built but it will also benefit them,” he said, “But if we will start this before this [decades of dam project] the people, who want to spread chaos will use this. This is my point because we are a federation we should try to take all provinces together.”