LAHORE: Jamaat-i-Islami Emir Senator Sirajul Haq has opposed confining the process of accountability to Sindh alone. Talking to the media after his return from 10-day foreign tour here on Wednesday, he said although new records of corruption were set during the Musharraf regime and PPP government, the accountability process should not be confined to Sindh. “It should be expanded to the four provinces and all the big fish, which have eaten up trillions of the pubic wealth, should be exposed and the plundered money recovered from them.”

Siraj said it was also duty of the political parties to wipe out the black sheep qdhand over the corrupt elements to the accountability body.

The emir of JI, which is junior partner in the PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, thanked the people of the province for voting the Jamaat into power in the local body elections and promised that the party would not disappoint them.

About his tour, he said the overseas Pakistanis had great love for Pakistan and as per Finance Minister Ishaq Dar’s statement they were remitting $18 billion annually, though they were deprived of the right to vote.

He demanded that the overseas Pakistanis be given the right to vote in the next general elections.

URDU DAY: On Sirajul Haq’s call “Urdu Day” was observed by the party all over the country to underscore the need for the enforcement of the national language as official language.

Rallies were held in the federal capital, all provincial capitals besides major cities.

Speaking at the main seminar at Mansoora, Senator Haq lamented that the national language is still ‘alien’ in the country as the successive rulers had been violating the 1973 Constitution and a Supreme Court order in 1985 on this score.

He paid tributes to Supreme Court Chief Justice Jawwad S. Khwaja for taking oath of his office in Urdu and also penning his note of dissent in a recent apex court judgment in the national language.

However, he said, as long as the rulers did not take practical steps for the enforcement of Urdu, the chief justice’s gesture won’t make any difference.

“We should be proud of our language, culture and way of life and there is need to do away with the sense of superiority of English,” he added.