KARACHI: Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani on Saturday said that federal government can only advise to the provincial government under the Article 149.
Durrani was talking to the media outside an accountability court here.
“It is wrongly assumed that the Centre can control a province under the constitution’s Article 149,” Siraj Durrani said.
Durrani backed a statement of Pakistan Muslim League-Functional’s chief Pir Pagara about Karachi.
Pir Pagara remarked that separating Karachi from Sindh is unacceptable, and he expressed his surprise, criticizing the federal law minister for making such a statement without much consideration to sentiments across Sindh.
The GDA Chief recalled that upon the creation of Pakistan, Karachi was established as the federal capital, and the majority of the people who migrated from India preferred to settle down in Karachi. However, Pir Pagara noted that a series of abrupt decisions led to the capital being shifted to Islamabad, and this shifting cost the national exchequer billions of rupees. He stressed that there was no reason to shift the capital from Karachi to Islamabad.
He said, Karachi should again be made the federal capital, as the city was the seat of the federal government at the time of Pakistan’s creation.
He said the garbage problem in Karachi only remained the focus of politics.
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Pir Pagara had earlier expressed surprise over the statement of law minister Farogh Naseem, and said that the federal minister (instead of it) should demand for bringing back the seat of federal government to Karachi.
Federal Law and Justice Minister Farogh Naseem earlier clarified that he never talked about making Karachi a province and his earlier statement was quoted out of context. (INP)
