Centre rejects Sindh govt’s claims over twin islands

Saiyan0321 · Oct 8, 2020

Centre rejects Sindh govt’s claims over twin islands

KARACHI: The fresh dispute between the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government at the Centre and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government in Sindh over Islamabad’s move to take over twin islands of Bundal and Buddo through a presidential ordinance does not seem to be ending anytime soon as a key member of the federal cabinet on Wednesday accused the provincial administration of “playing politics” over the issue.

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shibli Faraz vowed that Prime Minister Imran Khan would do everything that benefited the country and its economy and people.

Mr Faraz, who spent a busy day in Karachi meeting media persons and PTI leaders, brushed aside concerns raised by the Sindh government over what the latter termed Islamabad’s “unconstitutional” move. He ruled out the possibility of any “unconstitutional” move from the federal government and came up with strong criticism of the PPP government.

In the first leg of his daylong engagements, the minister visited Quaid-i-Azam’s mausoleum where he laid a wreath and offered Fateha before coming up for a brief question-and-answer session with the media.

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Shibli predicts failure of opposition’s movement

Without going into details, he categorically rejected the Sindh government’s claim about the twin islands and predicted failure of the anti-government movement the newly-formed opposition alliance is going to launch this month.

“They are actually playing politics on this [twin islands] issue,” he replied to a question about the Sindh government’s claim over the islands off Karachi coast. “The PTI government never makes any unconstitutional move. Our maritime minister Ali Zaidi has already explained things clearly. The PM and his government want to bring economic prosperity in this country. Who would benefit if the economy reactivates due to this project? Of course, the people of Karachi and Sindh. Then why they [Sindh government] are opposing it? It’s all politics. But the [federal] government has resolved to initiate projects of economic and business development and it would pursue this policy.”

He reiterated that the anti-government campaign of the opposition parties was an attempt to cover corruption of a few leaders and predicted that it would not meet with success as the people of Pakistan had tested the opposition parties multiple times and now they knew their hidden agenda well.

“The people have chosen the PTI to bring those who had plundered national wealth to justice,” he replied to a question about government reaction to the opposition move. “The opposition parties have no moral ground to launch the anti-government movement. It’s in fact aimed at saving their corrupt leadership from accountability. The main objective of the opposition leaders behind holding public gatherings is to secure their personal interests. The PPP and PML-N leaders are actually using different tactics to hide their corruption.”