PML-N leader Khawaja Asif has said that party supremo Nawaz Sharif would return to Pakistan until there was “zero risk” while apparently speaking about the legal complications.

“Nawaz Sharif will return to the country,” he said in an interview with Geo News on Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath on Monday. “We don’t want that someone would be settling a score with him or the judiciary would give such a decision. Therefore, he [Nawaz] will be brought back to the country after all risks against them will be zeroed.”

His comments were similar to those made by columnist Javed Chaudhry in an interview with Aaj News earlier this month. He told anchorperson Shaukat Piracha on Rubaroo that Nawaz would not come back before the current chief justice of the Supreme Court retires.

“Nawaz Sharif is waiting for September 16. He thinks he will not get justice while Umar Ata Bandial is the Chief Justice of Pakistan. However, I think he will not return even after September 16, as he sees no favourable conditions. He wants the judiciary and the establishment to apologise to him,” he told Aaj News on August 4.

Former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif to some extent also spoke in similar lines while talking to a private news channel. He said on August 10 that his elder brother would return to the country “next month”.

Meanwhile, Khawaja Asif denied rumours of elections delay after the appointment of Anwaarul Kakar as the caretaker prime minister. But he maintained his stance that general elections could be put off till next for which he blamed the time taken by the country’s top electoral authority for drawing new boundaries after the Council of Common Interests notification regarding the digital census of 2023.

When asked if Kakar will promote the establishment’s alleged motto of poll delay, the former defence minister replied that the caretaker prime minister meet the establishment due to the political instability in Balochistan but he has no such terms with the establishment.

There was no truth to rumours of elections delay after Kakar’s appointment as the interim prime minister, he said.

“I believe that elections will be held in February,” Asif said.