DERA MURAD JAMALI: Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) president Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal has claimed that successive rulers of the country during the past 70 years have given nothing to the people of Balochistan, except hunger, poverty, unemployment and lawlessness.

Addressing a public meeting here on Sunday, he alleged that the rulers had deliberately kept Balochistan backward.

Mr Mengal said his party would never support a government under which bullet-riddled bodies were found and atrocities against the people of the province continued.

BNP-M senior vice president Abdul Wali Khan Kakar, former senator Sana Baloch, former MNA Abdul Rauf Mengal, Advocate Sajid Tareen, Mir Mohammad Ismail Mengal, Dr Shahnaz Baloch, Jamila Baloch and other party leaders also spoke.

Mr Mengal said the rulers had never paid attention to the development of Balochistan and deprived its people of their due rights, including their share in natural resources of their own province.

He claimed that no development could be seen in Balochistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The CPEC, he added, would not benefit the people of Balochistan as not a single development project had been launched in the province as part of the mega project.

The BNP-M chief opposed the upcoming population census in the country, claiming that it would convert the majority of Baloch people into a minority in their own province. Taking part in the census in the presence of Afghan refugees in the province would be what he called a suicide for the Baloch people.

He claimed that development schemes for Punjab, such as power projects, rail and road networks and other big projects under the CPEC, were under way with full swing, but nothing was being done for Balochistan.

He said majority of people in Balochistan had been yearning for decades for potable water, electricity, roads and education and health facilities.

Mr Mengal, who had re­­mained chief minister of Balochistan, said that the oppression against Balochis­tan’s people was now touching its peaks.

He said no one was safe in Balochistan today, adding that hundreds of young people had gone missing and their families did not know whether their loved ones were alive or dead.

Mr Mengal rejected the allegation that his party was against development. The BNP-M, he added, called for just distribution of resources.

He said the Uch power plant was installed in Balochistan, but a large part of the province was without electricity. The people of Balochistan were not provided gas being extracted from their own province. They were not provided jobs in projects being launched in their province, he added.

He asked which Sardar had stopped the federal government from supplying electricity to Nasirabad.

The rulers, he said, were only interested in the resources of Balochistan and they were not ready to give people of this province their due share.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2017