PTI demands NAP’s implementation in Punjab

In the wake of Monday’s deadly suicide blast outside the Punjab Assembly in Lahore, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmakers have demanded the National Action Plan’s (NAP) implementation in the country’s largest province.

City Traffic Police DIG Capt (retd) Ahmad Mobin Zaidi and acting DIG (Operations) Zahid Gondal were among the six police officials who were killed. In all 13 people lost their lives and 80 others were injured.

PTI MPA Khurrum Sher Zaman submitted a resolution in the Sindh Assembly Secretariat on Wednesday stating that if NAP had been implemented in Punjab, the recent Lahore carnage could have been deterred.

The resolution demanded that the federal government bind the Punjab administration to implement the action plan in its entirety in the province.

The motion read that NAP was made effective in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and its outcomes were visible, as peace was restored in both the provinces. “Unfortunately, nothing of the sort seemed to have happened in Punjab.”

While the resolution was being presented, news channels were airing reports of a suicide attack in Peshawar’s Hayatabad area, leaving one dead and 18 others, including five civil judges, wounded.

Zaman’s resolution stressed that practical steps should be taken to ensure 100 per cent implementation of the action plan, nobody should be spared and those involved should be taken to task.

NAP was formulated the month following the December 2014 attack in which a group of militants laid siege to the Army Public School in Peshawar, leaving 141 people, including 132 students between the ages of eight and 18, dead – the highest number of fatalities in any terrorist attack in Pakistan to date.

The action plan was devised to crack down on terrorism and to supplement the ongoing anti-terrorist offensive in the north-western parts of the country.