ISLAMABAD: The government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir has announced holding local bodies elections in May 2022. This was stated by the Prime Minister (PM) of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Sardar Abdul Qayyum Niazi, here on Friday, during a meeting with journalists and political activists.
He said that his government is taking steps to hold local bodies elections in mid of May next year to transfer powers at the grassroots level to address the problems of the people at local level.
The AJK PM added that the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, has assured the government of the AJK of extending the full cooperation of the federal government for holding of the local body elections.
He said the government is pursuing a policy of austerity by reducing its expenditure and even the expenditure of the PM’s house which was in the millions of rupees on a daily basis, has been reduced to a few thousand.
Niazi said that the previous governments kept promising local body elections but could not put it into practice.
The PTI government will fulfil every promise made to the people. He said work has been started for holding local body elections, which will be held in May next year.
The prime minister assured that the PTI government would channelise all its resources to solve the long standing problems of the people of the state as per the vision of the PM of Pakistan, Imran Khan.
He said that no compromise would be made on the supremacy of merit and transparent distribution of development funds in the state and corruption would not be tolerated under any circumstances.
The AJK PM talking with a delegation of the Hurriyat Conference, while referring to the situation of Indian Occupied Kashmir said India has intensified the reign of terror in the occupied Kashmir to suppress the freedom movement.
He regretted the continued silence of the international community over the plight of the Kashmiri people of occupied Kashmir, who have been subjected to worst kind of atrocities at the hands of the Indian occupations forces.
He said that liberation of the occupied Kashmir is the priority of the government and all resources would be channelised to achieve this objective. Niazi strongly condemned the martyrdom of three innocent youths in a fake encounter in the occupied Kashmir a day ago by Indian occupying forces, and added that three more Kashmiri youths were killed in occupied Srinagar by the brute Indian forces in Haiderpur.
He said India has started mass genocide of Kashmiri people to crush the freedom movement launched by the Kashmiri people for attaining their fundamental right to self-determination.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021