Creation of Tanawal district demanded

MANSEHRA: The people of Mansehra, Abbottabad and Haripur districts living along the Indus River have demanded of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to notify another district of Tanawal in the Hazara division.

“The Tanawal strip, which is stretched over three districts of Hazara division, should be notified as a separate district to end the sense of deprivation of the locals as we will never accept our affiliation with any other district if notified,” Khursheed Khan, the president of Tehreek-e-Tanawal District, told reporters after a meeting in Lassan Nawab here on Monday.

The meeting, which was attended among others by the residents of different parts of Tanawal from Mansehra, Abbottabad and Haripur districts, ruled out their affiliation with any new district.

“The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Senator Azam Khan Swati had earlier promised the local people on behalf of KP Chief Minister Mahmood Khan during the local government’s elections earlier this year that Tanawal Tehsil would shortly be notified, but now it seems just a futile exercise,” Khursheed said.

He said Darband, Shergar, Pulrah, Lassan Nawab in Mansehra, Beer and Ghandaf in Haripur and Sherwan and Chamahti in Abbottabad should be merged to create the Tanawal district.“The participants of the meeting from Haripur, Abbottabad and Mansehra districts made it clear that they would never accept the merger of their areas into any new district except for Tanawal,” Khursheed added.

He said that Tanawal was a highly backward strip stretched to three districts along the Indus River and the government should put it on the way to prosperity and development and make it the ninth district of the Hazara division.