By IANS
Amritsar : He may have been the Pakistan prime minister when the 1999 Kargil war happened but that has not stopped members of a village near this Sikh holy city to pray for the return to power of Nawaz Sharif in neighbouring Pakistan.
Elders at Jatti Umra, a village 30 km from here, where Sharif’s father – Mian Mohammed Sharif – used to live till the Partition of India in August 1947, want Sharif to come back to power in Pakistan.
“We want Sharif to come back to power. We are proud that the Sharif family, which hails from here, has gone on to become one of the biggest political families in Pakistan. People in this village were upset when he was ousted from power in 1999,” Jatti Umra headman Tarsem Singh said.
Nawaz Sharif, who was born in Pakistan in 1949, has never visited his ancestral village even though their family home in Raiwind town in Pakistan was named “Jatti Umra”.
The ‘haveli’ (bungalow) owned by the Sharif family in the village now houses the village gurudwara.
Only a few village elders have fond memories of the elder Sharif.
Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan Sunday from exile in Saudi Arabia and is planning to contest the Jan 8 general elections there.