PTI government on Wednesday suffered a major setback when Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) announced its decision to quit the ruling coalition at the centre ahead of the vote on the federal budget, putting the ruling party at the mercy of six other smaller allies due to its fragile majority in the National Assembly.
Taking the floor in the National Assembly, Akhtar Mengal announced the break up citing the reason that none of the points of the two agreements reached with his party were implemented by the PTI. This is not the first time that the promises made with Balochistan have been flouted as the history is replete with such instances. Failure on the part of the PTI has added another chapter to the pages of history showing non serious attitude of the centre to the issues faced by the strategically located province. In fact Mengal had not sought anything extraordinary from the PTI government but only the security and development of his people. The six points reached between the two parties in 2018 included: recovery of missing persons, implementation of NAP, observance of six per cent quota for Balochistan in federal government departments, immediate repatriation of Afghan refugees and construction of dams in the province to resolve the acute water crisis. Through the second agreement, he had demanded allocations of various development projects for Balochistan. Indeed the issue of missing persons is very serious and Imran Khan before being elected to the top seat had promised to address the issue. However, over the last two years no worthwhile effort was made towards that end. Rather as pointed out by Mengal, about five hundred additional people have gone missing since August 2018. As regards development, Balochistan is the centrepiece of multibillion dollar CPEC project and we believe that the first beneficiaries of this mega project should be Baloch people. The fact of the matter is that by addressing sense of deprivation of Baloch people, we can exploit the hidden treasures of this land for the benefit of whole country. We expect that ruling party will immediately contact Akhtar Mengal to address his concerns. The intent should not be to get his party’s support to get budget passed but urgent resolution of problems of Balochistan. The bright future of Pakistan is linked with the province.
