PPP to launch movement for Seraiki province

MULTAN: PPP Deputy Parliamentary leader in Punjab Assembly Syed Ali Haider Gilani has rejected the South Punjab Administrative Secretariat and announced launching an agitation for the creation of Seraiki province.

Addressing a press conference at Multan Bilawal House on Wednesday, Syed Ali Haider Gilani said that the agitation would be launched soon after Covid-19 pandemic normalcy in the country. He told that the PPP would invite Seraiki nationalists to join the movement for the protection of their national rights and identity. PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari would also participate in the movement, he disclosed. The PPP was ready to fight for the rights of the people of the South Punjab, he assured. Syed Ali Haider Gilani said that the PPP was the author and pioneer of the South Punjab province. He said that the PPP had constituted a parliamentary province commission headed by Farhatullah Babar and the province commission had developed a very extensive draft after hectic consultations with all the stakeholders in the South Punjab, including Seraiki nationalists, political workers, intellectuals, writers, poets and civil society activists. He said if PTI was serious in creation of the South Punjab province, the party could adopt the province commission draft as a basic document for the creation of the province. Ali Haider Gilani said that only one province comprising of Multan, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan divisions’ was viable instead of Bahawalpur, Multan and Dera Ghazi Khan provinces. He also distributed copies of agreement signed between the PTI and the Janoobi Punjab Suba Mahaz. He told that both the signatories were committed to create the South Punjab province in the first 100 days of taking over public offices. The PTI had established a powerless South Punjab Secretariat, which was promoting serious differences between Multan and Bahawalpur, he added.

The people of the South Punjab voted the PTI in the general elections 2018 with the hope that the party would create the Seraiki province, he said. The PTI could not face her legislators and elected representatives from the South Punjab, he added. He suggested that Multan was one of the suitable places for the secretariat but the PTI extremely ignored the city in establishing the secretariat there. He said that the PTI should have to adopt constitutional procedure for the creation of the South Punjab province, which the PPP had adopted. PPP South Punjab senior vice president Khawaja Rizwan Alam and other PPP office-bears were also present.