separate meetings for its swift completion.
Sources said it had been found that 584 seminaries in Karachi were operating without any registration. Out of the total unregistered seminaries, they said, 144 were in district East, 343 in district West and 97 were in district South.
Sources said only data of local students was available and their estimated number was 73,000 across Karachi. However, the law enforcers had no idea how many foreigners were studying in these seminaries.
Recently, the Sindh Police’s Special Branch had begun geo-tagging of seminaries in Karachi.
However, geo-tagging of seminaries in Hyderabad division was completed where 1,850 facilities were identified and registered. Meanwhile, work is under way to complete geo-tagging of seminaries in Mirpurkhas, Sukkur and Larkana divisions.
During a recent meeting held pertaining to the implementation of NAP, the Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah had been informed that 167 seminaries in the province had been shut down by the law-enforcement agencies on different grounds.
The police officials had informed the chief minister that 21 seminaries in Karachi, Hyderabad and Badin districts had been searched for their alleged involvement in suspicious activities and hate material had been recovered from a few of them. Criminal cases were registered against the facilities and subsequent investigations were under way.
Meanwhile in Islamabad, Prime Minister Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif after chairing a meeting to review the NAP last week, had issued a statement saying that the government was implementing the plan in 20 key areas identified and agreed upon through consensus by the national leadership.
The meeting had included Ulema from the Tanzeem Ittehad-ul-Madaris, a conglomerate of five seminaries’ organisations representing major schools of thoughts, and it was reiterated that Islam had nothing to do with terrorism.
The prime minister had said that for a meaningful implementation of the NAP, consultations with the managements and administrations of organisations representing seminaries had become necessary to take them on board for moving forward with the National Action Plan.
Later, addressing a press conference, interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had said Pakistan had nothing to do with terrorism and the religious seminaries were not fomenting terrorism in the country.
The interior minister had said the government had decided to take assistance from religious leaders and clerics of all the schools of thought to battle terrorism and extremism in the country.
He had said the registration and regularisation of seminaries was taking place with the cooperation of religious organisations.
Then interior minister had claimed that all religious schools of thought and
their subsequent leaderships were willing for registration and regularisation of seminaries.
In this regard, he said, a joint committee was being formed with the coordination of seminaries’ organisations and leaders of all religious sects to prepare a comprehensive registration form for registration of madressahs within a period of three months.