HYDERABAD, June 17: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture President Syed Qamaruzzaman Shah on Sunday appealed to the president and prime minister to stop banks from auctioning off the mortgaged land of poor farmers who had failed to pay back their loans.

Mr Shah warned at the chamber’s meeting that the desperate farmers could resort to extreme measures if their land, the only source of their livelihood, were snatched.He termed the auctions illegal and warned that the chamber would not allow the process to continue.

The farmers in Thatta, Badin, Sanghar and Tando Mohammad Khan districts, who had suffered irreparable losses from last year's heavy rains, should be exempted during the payment of loans, he demanded.

The meeting strongly criticised the federal and Punjab governments for allocating funds for new dams and warned that the chamber would not allow the construction of any new dam on the River Indus.

The meeting welcomed Sindh secretary of agriculture’s decision to hold a dates exhibition in Khairpur in the last week of July and demanded that a new regulator should be installed on Rohri Canal at Tando Masti Khan bypass to reclaim waterlogged lands. Thousands of acres of land had been rendered barren over last 50 years for want of a regulator, the meeting said.

Mir Murad Ali Talpur, Akhund Ghulam Mohammad Siddiqui, Anwar Bachani, Agha Nasrullah and Dr Shahnawaz Shah, among others, attended the meeting.

SPSF: The Hyderabad chapter of the Sindh People’s Students Federation (SPSF) on Sunday warned that if police did not take back what they called a false case against their colleague within 48 hours the federation reserved the right to stage demonstrations and hunger strikes.SPSF leaders Lala Rizwan Mughal, Shabbir Palari and Zaheer Lashari told a news conference at the press club that Tariq Bhatti, who was the federation’s chief organiser of city taluka, was falsely implicated by police in Raheem Detho police encounter case that took place in Allahdad Chand village a few days ago.

They said that Mr Bhatti had nothing to do with Raheem Detho and his only fault lied in the fact that he was a devoted soldier of Ms Benazir Bhutto. The case was foisted upon him at the instance of Muttahida Qaumi Movement, they charged.

They demanded an impartial inquiry conducted into the case through a judge of sessions court and said that the federation had staged a demonstration outside the press club on May 18 in protest against injuries to Shabbir Palari (who was present at the press conference) he suffered during May 12 killings in Karachi.

But the cantonment police, in an stark example of political persecution, registered a case against 100 SPSF workers for staging the demo which their legal and constitutional right, they said.