APC to take up Kashmir issue today

ISLAMABAD: Opposition parties will hold an All Parties Conference (APC) today to “chalk out a joint strategy on how to tackle the problems facing Pakistan”.

The meeting, which will be presided over by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, will have top opposition leaders from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in attendance.

However, it has been learned that National Assembly Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will not attend the meeting.

While commenting on the key leaders’ absence, Special Adviser to Prime Minister for Information and Broadcasting Firdous Ashiq Awan tweeted that the major opposition parties PPP and PML-N had yet again “played” Fazl by “not showing up”.

“Fazl’s time would be better spent condemning the atrocities in Kashmir,” she wrote.

1/2
حضرت مولانا کا ایجنڈا اور جبکہ پیسہ بچاؤ پارٹیوں کا ایجنڈا کچھ اور ہے۔ مولانا صاحب کھوٹے سکے چلنے والے نہیں۔ ان کو چھوڑیں اور مظلوم کشمیریوں کے حق میں آواز بلند کریں۔

— Firdous Ashiq Awan (@Dr_FirdousPTI) August 19, 2019

1
اپوزیشن کی “آؤ آپس میں سیاست کریں” کے نئے ایپیسوڈ میں پی پی پی اور ن لیگ نے ایک بار پھر مولانا کے ساتھ ہاتھ کردیا۔ اے پی سی شھباز شریف کی کمر درد اور بلاول کے تنظیمی دورے کی نذر ہوگئی ایک دوسرے سے سچ نہ بولنے والے قوم کے ساتھ کیسے سچ بول سکتے ہیں ؟

— Firdous Ashiq Awan (@Dr_FirdousPTI) August 19, 2019

Earlier, Bilawal and Fazl met on Sunday night to discuss the agenda of all parties moot. According to details, the JUI-F chief had reached Zardari House in Islamabad to meet the PPP chairman to discuss matters related to the multi-party conference, wherein the joint opposition will huddle to evolve a joint strategy over the Kashmir issue as well as the political turmoil.

Making a mockery of so-called world’s largest democracy, India’s Narendra Modi government on August 5 unilaterally changed the constitutional status of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region by revoking the occupied region’s special status through a rushed presidential order, stoking pro-freedom sentiments in Kashmiris and putting the entire subcontinent at risk of a nuclear war.

President Ram Nath Kovind, in “concurrence” with the “Jammu and Kashmir government”, promulgated Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 2019 which states that provisions of the Indian Constitution are applicable in the state.

The President issued Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 2019 which comes into force “at once”, and shall “supersede the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 1954”.

“All the provisions of the Constitution” shall apply in relation to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, it said.

Home Minister Amit Shah, who is also the president of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), announced the revocation amid an uproar in two houses of Parliament, Lok Sabha, the Lower House, and Rajya Sabha, the Upper House, while Kashmir was under a historic curfew forcing thousands of natives inside their homes and deprived of all means to communicate with the outside world.