'Pak govt having good equation with Army will give country stability'

A civilian government in Pakistan that has a good equation with the Army was likely to provide more stability to the country and in turn to the region, former Indian envoy in Islamabad T C A Raghavan said today.

Raghavan made the remarks a day after Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan claimed victory in the general elections after his party emerged as the single largest in the National Assembly.

"Perhaps for the first time since 2008, we will now have a civilian government which will have a greater extent of comfort with the Army and vice-versa.

"Obviously this will not last forever. Diarchies don't last, they are always prone to internal contradictions. But for some time at least, a party in power...with which the military has a certain equation, if it means more stability in Pakistan, perhaps in terms of the overall region, is not such a bad thing," he said at a panel discussion at the Observer Research Foundation here.

Rana Banerjee, former special secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, opined that the poll results was the best possible outcome which the Pakistan Army could have hoped for, even better than what they had engineered.

Ashok K Behuria, senior fellow in the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, said a worrying trend witnessed during the election was the growing "soft radicalisation" in the country.