LARKANA: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Senator Saifullah Abro and the party’s Sukkur region president Syed Tahir Shah on Tuesday said that the PTI alone was ready to challenge the Pakistan Peoples Party in the next elections in Larkana.

No one could restrict the PTI from putting its candidates from the areas Larkana, said Senator Abro, who also heads a sub-committee on water and power in the upper house of the parliament.

Addressing a press conference at Insaf House here on Tuesday, they said constituencies in Larkana were not only for the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) to exclusively field its candidates there.

They foresaw fissures in the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) and Larkana Awami Ittehad (LAI) that had always thrown a challenge to the PPP in the elections in Larkana.

Senator Abro, Tahir Shah fear PPP-W, LAI trying to accommodate JUI-F

All political parties had jointly inflicted defeat on the PPP in elections and not the LAI alone. They hinted at forming a bigger political alliance in Sindh and trying to bring in all anti-PPP elements to sit under the umbrella of that alliance for future elections.

That alliance would have a boarder spectrum than the GDA, they said.

Referring to a recent statement of PPP-Workers president and LAI convener Dr Safdar Abbasi regarding launch of a bigger alliance by including the Sindh JUI-F, they alleged that ground was being prepared to target the PTI.

Apparently citing a meeting of Dr Safdar Abbasi with Prime Minister Imran Khan in Islamabad in recent days, they said that one should not build castles in the air with just one visit to Islamabad.

“The days of leg-pulling are gone; the PTI will never become scapegoat again; it will prefer to form [another] alliance,” said Senator Abro.

The PTI would field its candidates on all constituencies, they said. How would it be possible to welcome JUI-F chief Maulana Fazulur Rehamn, a bitter critic of Imran Khan, in Larkana? they asked.

The PTI would alone contest elections in local government polls, they announced, saying that it had not required to strike any alliance with any political party.

The time would tell who won or lost, they said, adding that the PTI was in power for three years, but no one was asking the PPP about its 13-year rule in Sindh.

The PPP had damaged almost all departments and devastated infrastructure of the province during its rule over Sindh, they said and named certain federally-funded projects which the PTI had lately launched.

They talked about Rs191 billion package, construction of molecular laboratory at Chandka Medical College and other projects in the health sector focused on medical colleges and universities, construction of a 220kV gird station with a cost of Rs6 billion in Larkana and many more to come. They pointed towards the element of corruption in Gaj Dam Project which was launched in year 2009. The contractor was fully paid, but the project remained unfinished, they said. Had it been completed in the prescribed time, the amount to the tune of Rs31 billion would not have gone down the drain, they added.

The PTI government had allocated Rs45 billion for the project, they said and announced to introducing health card in Sindh despite PPP’s opposition.

Commenting on the removal of Sohail Anwar Siyal from his ministry, they said he (Siyal) was just a common man and in the same breath added that he was facing National Accountability Bureau cases while Sharjeel Inam Memon was trying to flee the country. They predicted that Adil Altaf Unnar and Adnan Khan Unnar would contest from the PTI platform.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2021