ANP joins ‘demand-new-provinces’ bandwagon

With the demand for new province’s echoing across the country, the Awami National Party joined the bandwagon on Tuesday with its own demand for the formation of a South Pakhtunkhwa province in Balochistan.
After last ditch efforts by the ruling PPP to restore the district government system in Karachi to woo the MQM back into the coalition, the ANP feels “betrayed and abandoned” and its lawmakers are up in arms against the PPP. Earlier on June 14, the ANP had threatened to review its decision to support the government after being misled by some media reports about the non-implementation of devolution plan under the 18th Amendment, however, the warning was withdrawn following assurances from Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
The PPP’s announcement to form the Saraiki province has motivated other nationalist groups and political parties across the country to demand new provinces. On same grounds, ANP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa President Senator Afrasiab Khttak has demanded the carving out of South Pakhtunkhwa province in Balochistan for Pashtuns living in the militancy-ravaged province. “Keeping in mind the existing circumstance and demands of new provinces in the country, it is also indispensable to make a separate province for the Pashtun belt in Balochistan,” he said, while talking to ANP district presidents and general secretaries from the FATA.
The demand of South Pakhtunkhwa province in Balochistan was made after PML-Q Parliamentary Leader in Punjab Assembly Chaudhry Zaheeruddin submitted a resolution in the assembly for the formation of Saraiki province a few days ago Meanwhile, ANP lawmaker Bushra Gohar told Pakistan Today that her party had directed ANP Sindh ministers to boycott government offices, while the party had staged a walkout from National Assembly proceedings on Tuesday to protest the abolition of the magistracy in Karachi and Hyderabad. Bushra said her party had planned to stage protests in the Lower House against what she called the restoration of “Pervez Musharraf’s district government system in Sindh”.