GILGIT: Members from both treasury and opposition benches in the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) Assembly have strongly reacted to Attorney General (AG) Anwar Mansoor Khan’s arguments in the Supreme Court that at present the government cannot give GB the status of a province.

During the hearing of a case related to GB’s constitutional status on Friday, the AG informed a seven-member SC bench that GB could not be made a separate province.

The issue was taken up during a session of the GB Assembly on Saturday by opposition leader retired Captain Mohammad Shafi Khan who said that if GB was a disputed territory then its disputed status should be accepted. He said all constitutional institutions working in the region, including the National Accountability Bureau, should be abolished.

Mr Khan demanded that the state subject rule should be restored in the region, saying that if the state subject rule was enforced in India-held Kash­mir and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), why it was not intact in GB.

The GB lawmakers held the Kashmiri leadership responsible for influencing the federal government for expressing such views about the status of GB.

Javed Hussain of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) said that according to the United Nations’ resolutions India-held Kashmir, AJK and GB are disputed territories. But, he added, the GB people had not been granted those political rights which were enjoyed by the people of other two territories.

He said the chief judge of the AJK supreme court could not be appointed from outside.

Terming the treatment with the GB people discriminatory, Mr Hussain said that they had not been asked before plans were made for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or Diamer-Bhasha dam in the region.

He claimed that the GB people opposed the GB Order 2018, saying that it was not protected by the Constitution of Pakistan.

Independent member Kacho Imtiaz Haider claimed that the feeling of alienation among the youth of GB was increasing.

Sikandar Ali of Islami Tehreek Pakistan alleged that the Kashmir leadership had always opposed granting of rights to GB people.

PPP member Imran Nadeem Shigri said while separatist movements were active across the world the GB people had always struggled for Pakistan.

Opposition member Bibi Salima said that the GB people had no other option, but staging a sit-in protest outside Parliament House in Islamabad for their rights.

GB Law Minister Aurangzeb Khan claimed that a committee formed by the federal government under federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Ali Amin Gandapur to recommend political status of GB was trying to roll back powers granted to GB people by the previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government.

Aurangzeb Khan, who is a member of the committee, claimed that in its last meeting held in Islamabad, it was informed that the Kashmiri leadership had been opposing granting of the status of a province to GB. The committee proposed amendments in the GB Order 2018, such as restoration of GB council powers, he said, adding that GB council powers had been shifted to GB Assembly by the PML-N government.

GB Minister for Works Department Dr Muhammad Iqbal criticised the Kashmiri leadership for what he called its opposition to GB’s provincial status.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2018