LAHORE: Punjab Minister for Information and Culture Uzma Bukhari has demanded that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government release the passenger manifest, payment records and tracking data for a charter flight she says was used by the province’s chief minister, according to a statement issued on Friday.
Bokhari said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister was running what she called a “street movement” while travelling on a charter plane, and questioned what the flight was costing the province’s residents.
“The province does not have money to pay salaries or purchase wheat, yet its Chief Minister is travelling on a charter plane. Will the middle-class Chief Minister bear the cost of the charter plane himself?” she asked.
She said YouTubers had accompanied the chief minister on the flight, and asked where the online commentators who had previously objected to the Punjab government’s aircraft had gone.
The office of chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been held by Sohail Afridi since October 2025. He was elected with 90 votes in the 145-member provincial assembly after Ali Amin Gandapur resigned.
The most specific element of Bokhari’s statement concerns a boarding card being circulated in response to the allegation.
She said the flight number and boarding card being shown belonged to a service operating from Islamabad to Bahawalpur, whereas the journey in question ended at Rahim Yar Khan. That mismatch, she argued, indicates a charter flight rather than a scheduled commercial one.
Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan are both in south Punjab, roughly 200 kilometres apart, and are served by separate airports. A boarding card for one route does not establish travel on the other.
Bokhari asked the KP government to publish three things: who was on board, what was paid and by whom, and the aircraft’s tracking data. Closing the statement, she said the time for verbal claims was over — “Raseedan kaddo raseedan,” a Punjabi phrase meaning “produce the receipts.”
The exchange sits inside a dispute that has run between the two provincial governments for more than two years.
The Punjab government’s use of aircraft has drawn sustained criticism from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and from online commentators aligned with it. In 2024 the Punjab government publicly weighed establishing a provincial airline, with PML-N President Nawaz Sharif suggesting the national carrier could be acquired and rebranded as Air Punjab, before the province clarified it had no intention of joining the PIA bidding process. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, then under PTI’s Gandapur, had itself said it was prepared to buy the flag carrier.
Bokhari’s framing — that critics of Punjab’s aircraft have fallen silent about their own chief minister’s travel — is aimed squarely at that history.
She also said those who commit wrongdoing themselves accuse others of it, adding that the party’s leader had spent his life calling others thieves and had turned out to be the biggest thief. The remark refers to PTI founder Imran Khan, who remains in custody following convictions his party disputes and is appealing.
The claims are, unusually for a political exchange, checkable. Charter operators maintain passenger manifests. Payments leave an accounting trail in provincial records. Aircraft movements are logged by the Civil Aviation Authority and, for most flights, appear on public tracking services.
If the KP government releases the three categories Bokhari has named, the matter is resolved either way. If it does not, the dispute stays where most such exchanges end — as competing statements.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had not issued a response to Bokhari’s specific demands at the time of publication. The Lahore Times has approached the KP chief minister’s office and the provincial information department for comment, and will publish any response received.
The allegations in this report are those of the Punjab information minister and have not been independently verified.
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