Opposition to pressure PPP to table new local govt bill

Provincial assembly opposition leader Haleem Adil Sheikh on Thursday met parliamentary party leaders of different opposition parties to devise a joint strategy to pressure the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Sindh government to table a new local government bill in the PA after consulting with the opposition and other stakeholders.

Sheikh held separate meetings with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s Kunwar Naveed Jamil, the Grand Democratic Alliance’s Hasnain Mirza and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Khurrum Sher Zaman as well as other lawmakers.

All of them agreed that after the Supreme Court’s verdict discarded the disputed LG bill, the PPP should present a new bill in the PA after consulting with all the opposition parties.

They also agreed that the bill was anti-people and in violation of the constitution, so the SC ordered legislation for an empowered LG system. They said that after the order, the agreements between the provincial government and political parties on the LG system had become irrelevant.

The opposition lawmakers also agreed to devise a joint strategy for the PA’s sitting on Friday (today), and vowed to continue their joint struggle in the House and in the people’s court on public issues of the province.

Meanwhile, Sheikh condemned harassment and violence against a student of the Peoples University of Medical and Health Sciences, Nawabshah, and demanded immediate arrest of university employees involved in the act of harassment.

“Another case of harassment of a medical university student, Dr Perveen Rind, surfaced the other day who was first asked for having illicit relations with a senior university official and on her refusal she was tortured,” he said in statement.