PPP, PTI ask Nisar to step down following damning SC inquiry report

Reject his press conference as an attempt to hide his failures

Our Correspondent December 17, 2016

pakistani interior minister chaudhry nisar ali khan gestures as he speaks with media representatives in islamabad on march 10 2016 pakistan 039 s interior minister has ruled out sending the national cricket team to india for the world twenty20 until security assurances comes from new delhi saying the threats from indian extremists are concerning photo afp

Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan gestures as he speaks with media representatives in Islamabad on March 10, 2016. Pakistan's interior minister has ruled out sending the national cricket team to India for the World Twenty20 until security assurances comes from New Delhi, saying the threats from Indian extremists are concerning. PHOTO: AFP

ISLAMABAD: Rejecting his news conference, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Saturday demanded that Interior Minsiter Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan step down in the wake of a damning report on the August 8 killing of lawyers in Quetta.

Quetta hospital carnage: Judicial commission exposes chinks in anti-terror armour

“The interior minister should have resigned after such stinging indictment by the Supreme Court Inquiry Commission but instead he has chosen to whitewash himself through a monologue on the media and rant against the opposition,” said the PPP spokesperson Senator Farhatullah Babar.

Babar said any honourable person would be pained and shocked at the audacity of the interior minister in ‘regurgitating half-truths’ and ‘wagging his tongue’ against the opposition.

Citing the report, PPP Senator Sherry Rehman condemned the failure of the National Action Plan and the government’s ‘inaction’ two years after the Army Public School attack in Peshawar. “The shocking level of inaction revealed in the Quetta Inquiry Commission Report is an indictment of the Balochistan and federal government as well as the NAP,” Sherry said in a statement.

Nisar rejects judicial commission’s report as ‘one-sided’

She said the commission has unmistakably called out the Interior Ministry for its systematic failure in almost every aspect where it should have been acting to counter-terrorism. “The details of the report reveal a trail of bureaucratic paralysis and criminal neglect in which the Interior Ministry also failed and delayed to proscribe terrorists. Upon reading the findings of this report, what further evidence of inaction do we need?” she questioned.

In a statement issued by the PTI media wing, the party suggested that the minister take a ‘logical decision’ and hand in his resignation according to moral dictates and democratic norms. It said the apex court must take action against Nisar against Section 3-184 if he rejects to resign from his position.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2016.