Give votes, get rights: PML-Q to carve Hazara province, says Pervez Elahi

Deputy prime minister says his party had raised the Hazara province demand in parliament.

MANSEHRA:

The Hazara identity serves as hot iron rod to strike on as elections loom. Quite unsurprisingly, the promise of a separate Hazara province seems synonymous with electoral gains to the leadership of Pakistan Muslim League - Quaid (PML-Q).  

“Just put a stamp on PML-Q’s election symbol during the polls and have your Hazara province created,” said the party’s Deputy Prime Minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi to a public gathering at Thakra village in Mansehra district on Sunday.

The PML-Q leader said that his party had taken up the demand of a separate Hazara province to parliament while recognising the constitutional right of the Hazara people. He added that the party also provided relief to people in the Balakot area of Mansehra during the 2005 earthquake to underscore PML-Q’s commitment to the Hazara cause.

Promises and provinces

Criticising former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Elahi said that he was voted to power twice by the Hazara people, but he had let them down.

“The time has come. The people of Hazara must respond to Sharif’s disloyalty by rejecting his party,” he said.

Once PML-Q is victorious, Hazara province’s public welfare programme will be designed along the lines of that in Punjab, said Elahi. People will receive free schooling, books and medicines, he added.



Defending PML-Q’s liaison with Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat, Elahi said that no party could gain electoral victory on its own and such coalitions and seat adjustments were necessary. He revealed that his party was in the process of negotiations with other religious parties for seat adjustments.

On the occasion, Elahi announced a passport office for Mansehra, resumption of suspended infrastructural work in New Balakot City, completion of ongoing gas projects across Hazara division and the waiving of governmental loans in the division’s earthquake hit areas.

Adviser to the prime minister Syed Qasim Shah, Chief of Suba Hazara Tehrik Sardar Yousuf, Minister of State for Technical Education Sardar Shahjehan Yousuf, and Federal Minister Sheikh Waqas Akram were other speakers at the function.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2012.