Rangers’ activities in interior Sindh unconstitutional: chief minister

SUKKUR: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah on Tuesday said the Rangers’ activities in interior Sindh are unconstitutional as they were mandated to eliminate four serious crimes from Karachi alone.

The chief minister said consultations regarding an extension in the Rangers’ term are going on and every institution has constitutional authority and should work under the ambit of the Constitution.

He said this while talking to the media after presiding over a meeting on the law and order situation at the commissioner’s office in Larkana.The chief minister said the issue of the Rangers powers will be decided in the party’s meeting. He said that the law and order situation in Karachi was now much better than it was before.

“We have provided training to police personnel in Karachi and equipped them with modern weapons, and the Larkana police will also be provided with sophisticated weapons to combat criminal elements,” he said.

Qaim Ali Shah said he had held a meeting with Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif and with the help of the Pakistan Army established a good law and order situation in Sindh. He said that Syed Owais Shah, the son of the Chief Justice of Sindh High Court Sajjad Ali Shah, had been recovered while the killers of Amjad Sabri would be arrested very soon.

The chief minister categorically denied any conflict between the Sindh government and law-enforcement agencies.Qaim said that the Sindh Police were carrying out operations against criminals in the province while in Karachi, the Rangers and police were conducting joint operations.

To a question about Asad Kharal, the chief minister said that he had directed the police to probe the matter.Qaim Ali Shah visited the house of Home Minister Sohail Anwar Siyal where he held a meeting with him and later both the leaders drove to the commissioner’s office in Larkana to attend the meeting.

Meanwhile, the chief minister, along with Food Minister Syed Nasir Shah, Agriculture Minister Sardar Ali Nawaz Khan Mahar and Home Minister Sohail Anwar Siyal, visited the Shank Dyke in Ghotki where irrigation and SIDA officials briefed him about erosion by floodwaters in the dyke.

The chief minister reprimanded the irrigation authorities and told them when millions of rupees had been spent on strengthening the Shank dyke, then why was its condition vulnerable. He said that he would take action against officials if they were found guilty of negligence.

Agencies add: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has urged Qaim Ali Shah to exercise his powers to resolve the issue of extension in the mandate of the Rangers in Sindh.

In a letter to the chief minister, he pointed out that the Rangers had played a key role in maintaining law and order situation in Sindh, especially in Karachi, and restored normalcy.

Chaudhry Nisar regretted that the Sindh government had been adopting delaying tactics every time on the issue of extension in the mandate of Rangers in the province.

The minister said delay in providing legal cover to the actions of the Rangers in Sindh would impact the ongoing operation. He said it was the joint responsibility of the federal and provincial governments to remove the bottlenecks in the way of taking the operation to its logical conclusion.

Chaudhry Nisar expressed concerns over the issue by stating that the operation in Karachi would be impacted because of unnecessary delay in the extension of the Rangers’ authority whereas it may also place a negative impact upon the spirit and the performance of the civil-armed forces.

Meanwhile, Chaudhry Nisar contacted Rangers Director-General (DG) Major General Bilal Akbar by telephone and assured him that the Rangers efforts for the establishment of peace in the city would not go waste, adding that the federal government will continue playing its constitutional and legal role regarding an extension in the Rangers authority.