Qureshi’s Ghotki meeting: District govt creates hurdles but organisers say show will go on

Administration forces organising committee to change venues while Sindh ministers conduct covert meetings.

SUKKUR:

While Pakistan Peoples Party drop-out Shah Mahmood Qureshi seems to have placed himself in a strong position, the organisers of his Ghotki meeting are having a difficult time putting the show together.

The district administration appears to be making it as tough as it can for the 13-member organising committee to prepare for a grand public meeting where Qureshi is expected to announce his future strategy on November 27.

The committee, which comprises followers of the Ghousia Jamaat, is making preparations for a public meeting to be held at vacant ground on Qadirpur Road. But the district administration is forcing them to hold the meeting in a public school on Mathelo Road, which is much smaller and can only accommodate between five and seven thousand people.

This is not the first time that the venue has been changed. Earlier, the meeting was to be held near a bus terminal on the National Highway, but expecting massive attendance which could block the highway, it was shifted to a public park near Rehmoonwali. However, after the district administration raised an objection over that venue, the organising committee moved the meeting to the current location.

“Before we could even begin making arrangements at Rehmoonwali, the district administration started sending the Ghotki SHO and DSP with a request to shift the venue citing a terrorist threat,” said one of the organisers, Irshad Hussain Qureshi.

The plots, said Irshad, are owned by Raees Ibrahim Chachar, who is the younger brother of Sardar Ali Gohar Mahar, Ali Nawaz alias Raja Mahar, and a follower of the Ghousia Jamaat. “The owners of the plots have no objection but the district administration is opposing for some inexplicable reason,” he said.

The government seems to be making hectic efforts to cause the public meeting to fail.

Over a week ago, Sindh Local Bodies Minister Agha Siraj Durrani had visited Ghotki and met the influential Mahar brothers Sardari Ali Gohar Mahar and MNA Ali Mohammad Mahar. According to sources familiar with the situation, Durrani asked the Mahar brothers to foil Qureshi’s public meeting or at least ask their men to stay away from it. Sources said he also invited them to join the PPP and that said MNA Faryal Talpur was likely to visit Khangarh with a formal invitation for the brothers.

On Wednesday, however, Durrani took the Mahar brothers to the Presidency in Islamabad where President Asif Ali Zardari invited them to the PPP, sources said. The PPP, they said, wants the Mahar brothers to join or at least make the announcement before Qureshi’s November 27 rally.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2011.