Ensure district status to Tanawal or face defeat in polls, KP MPs warned

HARIPUR: Tehrik district Tanawal chief Dr Abdul Rauf on Friday said the Tanoli tribespeople belonging to the three districts of Hazara division would reject the sitting parliamentarians in the next election if they failed to fulfill their promise of getting a separate district notified.

“All the princely states have been given the status of districts at the time of their merger with Pakistan but, unfortunately, the largest state of Amb in Hazara was divided into Mansehra, Abbottabad and Haripur districts under a conspiracy,” he told reporters here.

Dr Abdul Rauf said hundreds of families from the same tribe were forced to relocate to other areas from the native villages and this divide was further expanded with the construction of the gigantic Water and Power project of Tarbela dam.

The Tanoli tribe-dominated areas of three districts have been demanding a separate Tanawal district for the last seven decades but to no avail, he added. He said that their areas had deliberately been kept under-developed and deprived of basic facilities due to which the Tanolis had to move to other parts of the country for better living.

Dr Abdul Rauf said that all the previous governments had made hollow promises but backed off their promises but the Tanolis of Hazara could not be cheated anymore. “Now, we have decided to solve our issues under the banner of Tehrik district Tanawal,” he added.

He urged the elected MNAs and MPAs from the Tanawal belts of Hazara to fulfill their promise of getting the Tanwal district notified, or else they would be punished by exposing them to the worst defeat during the coming general election.

To a question, he said that he had no objection to the upgradation of Alai tehsil in Battagram to the district level but ignoring their longstanding demand to create Tanawal district was unjust.