Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Thursday that no new channel will be built from the Industry river, unless a consensus is reached within the Common interest Council (CCI), while political tensions continue to get on the controversial project.
Speaking at a joint press conference alongside the President of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Islamabad, the Prime Minister said that the next CCI meeting, scheduled for May 2, would officially approve of the agreement between Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and PPP.
The announcement follows intense negotiations between the two main coalition partners, sources indicating that the PML-N has accepted all PPP requests concerning the channel construction plan.
The breakthrough comes in the middle of growing unrest in the Sindh, where demonstrations broke out in cities like Sukkur, Nawabshah and Daharki. The demonstrations were triggered by the diversion proposed by the federal government of six new channels of the Industry river, a decision widely opposed in the province.
Bilawal, accompanied by the Sindh chief minister, Murad Ali Shah, and other senior PPP leaders, attended the meeting of high issues in Islamabad. CM Shah reiterated the position of the party company, warning that although the PPP does not seek to collapse the federal government, it retains the ability to do so if necessary.
Tensions reached a peak earlier this week when the Senate went down to chaos on rival resolutions on the channel project. PPP legislators organized a raising while PTI senators clashed with members of the ruling coalition.
In an attempt to defuse the crisis, the minister of Law, Azam Nazeer Tarar, promised that no decision would be imposed unilaterally and stressed that the concerns of the Sindh would be answered through the constitutional consultation.
The Prime Minister’s special assistant on political affairs Rana Sanaullah was also responsible for launching a direct commitment with Sindh’s political leadership. He assured the stakeholders that the project would not be “at the Bulldozer” and launched the idea of ​​multipartition consultations.
The controversial channel project of 250 billion rupees has not yet been approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) and is currently unanswered.
The problem also set the dynamics of the coalition. Last week, Bilawal warned that the PPP could consider retiring from the alliance if the case was not resolved to the satisfaction of the Sindh.
