PESHAWAR: Former National Assembly speaker and PTI leader Asad Qaiser on Tuesday condemned the federal government’s decision to ban the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) and said the federal government should hold talks with the rights movement to address issues.

Addressing a news conference on the provincial assembly’s premises, Mr Qaiser said that the federal government needed to speak to the PTM to address its concerns.

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Speaker of the KP Assembly Babar Saleem Swati, former federal minister Mohammad Ali Durrani and provincial higher education minister Meena Khan Afridi were also present on the occasion.

Mr Qaiser said that he hoped that the PTM would make demands in line with the Constitution.

Qaiser flays raid on KP House in Islamabad

He said that the PTI leaders, in meeting with the PTM chief, declared that they would support their demands if they adhered to the Constitution.

“The federal government should engage with the PTM instead of taking the path of confrontation. I also ask the provincial government to deal with this issue tactfully,” he said.

Minister Meena Khan Afridi said there was clarity in the provincial government’s stand on the issue.

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He said that earlier, the interior ministry had written to the provincial chief secretary and police chief, who were the representatives of the centre.

The minister, however, said the chief minister had engaged with the PTM.

He said as the federal government had banned the PTM and if the movement held the Pashtun Adalat as scheduled, the provincial government would treat it “differently.”

Mr Qaiser criticised the police and Rangers’ raid on the KP House in Islamabad and said the way the chief minister was handled in the federal capital was aggression against the federation.

“Whatever you have done is aggression against the Constitution,” he said.

The PTI leader said that the federal government was trying to push the provincial government to the wall.

He said the 56 amendments proposed by the federal government to the Constitution were meant to change the shape of the document altogether.

Mr Qaiser said that those constitutional amendments would do away with the basic constitutional rights of the people to gather and join political parties.

He said that the PTI would resist those amendments and would take to the streets to protect people’s rights.

The PTI leader said his party stood for the supremacy of the Constitution, independence of judiciary, empowerment of parliament, civilian supremacy, and rule of law.

He said the federal government was illegally disallowing residents of the KP government from going to Punjab.

“We will go to Sindh, Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan,” he said.

Mr Qaiser said Islamabad police were detaining poor Afghans and showing them in TV advertisements as PTI workers.

He questioned if all those large numbers of people, who joined the PTI protests, were Afghans.

The PTI leader said that the PTI workers successfully managed to reach the D-Chowk in Islamabad and never had planned to stage a sit-in.

He said that even lawyers had also started a campaign against the proposed constitutional amendments and the PTI supported their drive.

Speaker of the KP Assembly Babar Saleem Swati said the “attack” on KP House was not a minor incident and rather, it was an attack on the entire province.

He said that the federal government tried to ridicule the elected chief minister of a province by restricting his movement in Islamabad and attacking the KP House in his presence.

“It was an attack on the Constitution and federation,” he said.

Mr Swati said that the provincial assembly had constituted a committee to probe that raid on the KP House and its report would be laid before the house.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2024