Mixed reaction in Attock to NA seat slashing

ISLAMABAD: Attock is among Punjab’s districts, which is set to lose one of its National Assembly’s three seats as per the new delimitation of constituencies, as the only federal minister from this relatively backward district, MNA Sheikh Aftab Ahmad dismisses any loss to the electorate of this area due to the new scheme.

However, others from the district, including former state minister for environment and now a senior member of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Malik, Amin Aslam and independent MNA from Attock’s NA-59, Muhammad Zain Elahi, see it as an electoral injustice to PML-N’s MNA from NA-58 Malik Ihtebar Khan says, “What should I say. I can neither appreciate nor deplore the loss of one seat of the National Assembly. However, my people are unhappy the way, the census was held across the district for they feel their expectations were not taken care of”.

The sprawling Attock district, which borders Rawalpindi and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with a total of 1,883,556 population and seat quota of 780,266 persons, is to lose one NA seat and will now have two seats, whereas its share in the provincial assembly will be six seats with an addition of one.

“Attock had two National Assembly constituencies in 1997-98 and I don’t see any harm in again having two seats in the legislature,” commented Sh Aftab while talking to The News at his office at the Parliament House.

For the entire country a formula, he pointed out, was thrashed in the wake of the national census, and the most populace province Punjab would be sacrificing seven of its NA seats. “We should not try to make an issue out of this,” he emphasised and welcomed the carving out of another Punjab Assembly seat in the district.

When approached, Malik Amin sounded quite unhappy over this development and termed it as a great injustice done to people of the district to appease what he called property dealers by carving out a seat for them. “The NA seat has been given to Islamabad by taking away a sizable chunk of population of Attock district,” he alleged.

He lamented that Attock was already an underdeveloped district despite contributing significantly to the national economy as it houses an aviation hub in Kamra, Sanjwal Ordnance Factory and Ghazi Barotha hydro project. Malik Amin said, “But the district continues to be deprived of basic needs like electricity, proper health cover and well-equipped government schools and colleges.”

The former minister slammed the public representatives and members of the legislatures for their complete silence on slashing away of one MNA seat, urging the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of this injustice meted out to the district.

MNA Malik Ihtebar Khan, who made his way to the National Assembly by winning from NA-58, neither supported nor opposed openly the seat loss and said the seat was arranged basically for Shaukat Aziz to get elected MNA during the regime of Pervez Musharraf. He agreed that it would have been an ideal situation, had his district retained all three MNA seats.

He also agreed that Attock was a backward district, mainly because of its scattered population in some tehsils. But he insisted so many uplift schemes had been launched and several of them already completed in his constituency.

Zain Elahi MNA from NA-59, who is son of another influential political figure Tahir Sadiq, who served the district as its nazim, said they were carefully watching the situation but were not alarmed by this seat loss. “We are considering options whether and how to contest this loss of one MNA seat,” he said.