Independent Senator Mohsin Khan Leghari submitted a letter to the secretary of the Parliamentary Commission on New Provinces in Punjab to express his strong reservations over the exclusion of representation from the Dera Ghazi Khan division in the consultation process. He also urged the commission’s chairman, Senator Farhatullah Babar, to clarify whether one province will be formed or two.
“I represented PP-245 DG Khan VI in the Punjab Assembly from 2003-2012 before being elected as an Independent Senator in March 2012,” the letter, titled ‘Proposed South Punjab/Bahawalpur Province,’ stated. “As a representative of Dera Ghazi Khan, and being elected with cross party support in the provincial assembly to the senate, I strongly believe I am a stakeholder in the issue. [The] future of my home district is being decided without any input from the people and the public representatives of the district. I would like to register my strongest possible reservations at the exclusion of DG Khan from the consultative process to be put on record.”
The commission was constituted in August of last year by the speaker of the National Assembly and comprises Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senators Farhatullah Babar and Syeda Sughra Imam, Awami National Party (ANP) Senator Haji Mohammad Adeel, Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) Senator Kamil Ali Agha and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) Senator Malik Muhammad Rafique Rajwana, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F) Senator Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haidri, PPP MNAs Arif Aziz Sheikh, Jamshed Ahmed Dasti, Syed Ali Musa Gilani, PML-N MNAs Tehmina Daultana and Chaudhry Saud Majeed, as well as Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) Dr Farooq Sattar.
The Punjab Assembly was asked to nominate two members but the speaker has so far refused to nominate anyone for the commission. PML-N has been boycotting the commission sittings and none of the nominated members attend the meetings.
Leghari, who was one of the most proactive parliamentarians for the rights of southern Punjab, lashed out at the issue of the Bahawalpur province announcement while talking to The Express Tribune. The announcement was made by the Punjab Governor Makhdom Ahmed Mehmood and former prime minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani during a public rally in Rahimyar Khan. They declared that only one province would be formed, named Bahawalpur province.
Leghari said the PPP government was trying to exploit the popular demand at the very end of its tenure to gain political mileage for the upcoming elections, as both the PPP and the PML-N had been blocking his resolutions in the Punjab Assembly for 4 years. He said that it was only after Shahbaz Sharif threw the PPP ministers out from his cabinet that PPP took up the South Punjab cause. Leghari lamented the fact that southern Punjab’s water share from river Indus had continuously been compromised, and ‘champions’ of the cause had acted as mere spectators.
Furthermore, Leghari added that he had raised the issue on the floor of the Senate to clarify the statement made by Mehmood and Gilani.
According to him, Senator Babar instantly deflated Mehmood-Gilani’s Bahawalpur province bubble. Babar distanced the commission from the statement, saying that no matter who claimed what, the commission has not made its recommendations yet regarding the formation of the province that would encompass the Bahawalpur, Multan and DG Khan divisions.
Senator Babar said, “It is necessary that I clarify that whatever has been said by anybody other than the chairman of the commission, regardless of his position, is not the view of the commission itself. “
Published in The Express Tribune, January 23rd, 2013.