Islamabad: Punjab's new information minister, Fayaz-ul-Hasan Chohan, has announced a ban on "vulgar" movie billboards in the Pakistani province, angering those who fear the growing influence of hardliners under new Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Since Khan's party appointed him last week, Chohan has caused a number of rows, including with his visit to the grave of a man sentenced to death for killing the governor of Punjab in 2011, and with critical remarks about Nargis, a popular Pakistani singer and actress.

"If any vulgar billboard is found at any cinema in Punjab after three days, there will be a fine in first place, and if any one didn't comply, that cinema will be shut down," Chohan told a public meeting in Lahore.

"Is there any humanity that you print half-naked women and put them on big billboards?" he said.

Khan's election victory in July was helped by strong support from extremist parties. Chohan joined Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party from the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. "It's pure moral policing," the Left-leaning politician and rights activist Ammar Rashid said.

Haqqani steps

Pakistan's Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the anti-corruption agency to take steps to extradite Hussain Haqqani, the country's ex-ambassador to the US, the central character in the 2011 Memogate scandal.

Haqqani was behind a memo indirectly sent to former US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen in 2011, a Pakistani judicial commission concluded in 2012.

In the memo, Haqqani sought Washington's help in averting a military coup in Pakistan following the May 2, 2011 US raid that killed al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbottabad. Supreme Court Chief Justice Saqib Nisar expressed displeasure with the Federal Investigation Agency.