HARIPUR: With the nation going to polls on Feb 8, the politics on creation of Hazara province has also witnessed a revival but without electable candidates, who once used the slogan for their re-entry into the parliamentary politics.

The PML-N leadership, whose supremo Nawaz Sharif is contesting elections from Hazara for the second time after 1993, has also hinted at making the Hazara province part of the party’s manifesto. The beleaguered PTI candidates are also reiterating their commitment to giving Hazara the province’s status if the party came to power.

On the other hand, the parties that claimed to be the torch-bearers of Hazara province’s movement appear to have entered the electoral field with a rekindled hope of winning the hearts and minds of voters this time around.

Hazara Qaumi Mahaz (HQM), believed to be the oldest voice for Hazara province, has fielded the highest number of candidates not only in Hazara but in Sindh province for the first time since its creation in 1987. It has allotted tickets for NA-15, Mansehra, NA-17, Abbottabad and NA-242, Karachi. It has also awarded seven tickets for Sindh Assembly and four for KP Assembly seats.

Hazara division comprises eight districts with a population of 6,188,736 people, including 3,382,914 registered voters. The region has seven NA and 18 PA seats.

“We have been struggling for last 37 years for the rights of Hazara people – it’s our great success that HQM has fielded the highest number of candidates for elections during the last three decades,” claimed Qazi Mohammad Azhar, the party’s chairman. He said his party, which was founded by late Asif Malik Advocate, has a track record of advocating and protesting peacefully for the rights of Hazara people.

“Whether it’s the demand for establishment of Abbottabad Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, provision of health facilities, jobs and royalty of hydel profit to Hazara, HQM has remained in the forefront,” he claimed.

Appearing optimistic of winning maximum seats, Mr Azhar said: “We have a one-point agenda to get the status of Hazara restored to the position existed before 1901 when it had its territorial limits spread to Attock, Murree, Chach Hazara and Jehlum.”

To a question about the scope and veracity of the demand of carving out Hazara province from KP, he said Hazara division had multilingual population of over eight million people, who spoke Hindko, Gojri, Potohari, Pahari, Kohistani and Pashto languages. He clarified that the demand for Hazara province was purely on administrative grounds rather than benefitting speakers of any particular language (Hindko).

However, an analysis of the voting trends in favour of pro-Hazara province shows that regional parties and candidates secured an abysmally low number of votes except a couple of constituencies in Abbottabad.

During the 2002 election, HQM fielded its candidates in three PA constituencies and one NA seat of Abbottabad, but the candidates, including its founding chairman late Asif Malik, could not bag more than 5,000 votes collectively. The party skipped the 2008 election, lending support to some independent candidates.

The 2013 election was the first election for pro-Hazara province parties to prove their worth and popularity in the backdrop of the April 12, 2010 incident in Abbottabad, when seven pro-Hazara province activists died and over 100 sustained injuries when law enforcement agencies opened fire during a demonstration against the renaming of then NWFP as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The incident gave birth to another movement for Hazara, and it was Sardar Haider Zaman alias Baba Haider Zaman-led Tehreek Suba Hazara (TSH), registered as a political party a year before the 2013 election.

The HQM did not field any candidate and supported TSH’s candidates for four NA seats of Abbottabad, Haripur and Mansehra, and nine nominees for KP Assembly seats in Kohistan, Mansehra, Abbottabad and Haripur. But all the candidates, including Baba himself, lost to the candidates of PTI, PML-N and independents.

Baba Zaman secured 36,571 votes from NA-18, Abbottabad-II, and stood third, while the TSH’s other highest vote getter was Ejaz Zar Khan Jadoon, who secured 25,797 votes and became runner-up to PML-N’s Aurangzeb Nalotha in PK-47, Abbottabad.

Hazara Awami Ittehad, another pro-Hazara province splinter party, also fielded two candidates in KP Assembly constituencies of Abbottabad, but both could not secure even 1,000 votes combined.

During the 2018 election, TSH allotted tickets to a couple of candidates, but they got only a few hundred votes. The HQM had decided to abstain from election process due to reasons unknown.

Unlike HQM, Sardar Gohar Zaman, the cousin of Baba Zaman and current chairman of TSH, is the party’s only candidate, contesting from PK-44, Abbottabad, for the Feb 8 election.

“The slogan of Hazara province still carries thrill with great potential to translate into reality as it’s a popular demand of the people. It’s still possible if the electables from the region show a bit of sincerity to the cause of people,” claims Abdul Saboor Qureshi, TSH general secretary.

About the plummeting popularity of nationalist parties, especially TSH, once having political heavyweights like Sardar Yousuf, late Gohar Ayub Khan, Yousuf Ayub Khan, Raja Amir Zaman, Amanullah Jadoon, Mushtaq Ghani, Inayat Khan, Qasim Shah, Shehzada Gustasib, Nawaz Khan Alai, and some politicians from Kohistan, Torghar and Battagram, in its fold, Mr Qureshi said these leaders were the architects of TSH’s manifesto and made Baba Zaman to get the party registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan, but when the party was notified and date for the 2013 election announced, they ‘ditched’ Baba Zaman and rushed to the mainstream political parties.

He said politics in Hazara was personality-based rather than ideology. He said as Baba Zaman and Asif Malik hailed from ‘a class of commons’, they could not muster the strength as could the electables do.

Madni Ehjaz Jadoon, a journalist from Abbottabad, said Baba Zaman had committed a blunder by registering a separate party instead of joining the HQM’s well-established movement. He said most of those politicians, who joined TSH after the April 2010 incident, were those who had lost the previous elections and used the TSH’s platform as a stepping stone to re-enter parliamentary politics.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2024