QUETTA: Balochistan’s coalition government, led by Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, is facing a new dilemma as differences have emerged between the allied parties on the issue of empowerment; and PML-N ministers and advisers and those in the allied parties have decided to quit the provincial cabinet.
A joint meeting of the PML-N and its allied PML-Q ministers and MPAs was held here on Thursday night in which it was observed that the PML-N and its allied parties’ members have not been given enough powers to run their departments.
“The meeting decided that all ministers and advisers of PML-N and its allied parties will resign from the cabinet,” Akbar Askani, Adviser to the Chief Minister on Fisheries, said after the meeting. All ministers and advisers of both the parties would resign from the provincial cabinet en masse.
Sources said that the joint meeting decided to tender resignations from the provincial cabinet and hand them over to the PML-N parliamentary leader and senior minister Sardar Sanaullah Zehri on his return from abroad. It would be used as an option to quit the provincial government in case Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch does not accept their demand to give them enough powers to run their departments.
PML-N Balochistan spokesman Allauddin Kakar told Dawn that the Home Minister and PML-N leader, Mir Sarfaraz Bugti, was not invited to the meeting on law and order, presided over by Prime Minister Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif at the Governor’s House Quetta recently. His subordinate Home Secretary and the IGP were present at the meeting, he added.
Minister for Planning and Pashtoonkhawa Milli Awami Party leader, Hamid Khan Achakzai, was taken to a fishermen convention in Gwadar in a special aircraft while Adviser to Chief Minister on Fisheries Haji Akbar Askani of PML-N was neither consulted nor invited,” Allauddin Kakar said.
He further stated that the provincial ministers and advisers to the Chief Minister from PML-N and allied parties, including PML-Q, decided that in case the chief minister and other authorities continue to ignore them, they would resign collectively from the provincial government.
Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti lodged his protest on the floor of the House and walked out of the assembly to show his anger at having been ignored for the law and order meeting.
The PML-N and PML-Q were of the view that ministers and advisers of the National Party and Pashtoonkhawa Milli Awami Party were enjoying all powers while they were mere spectators.