LARKANA: Senior Sindh Minister for Education Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, on Thursday criticised Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan for not condemning the Taliban, who have claimed responsibility of the Peshawar school carnage, and asked him to come up with a clear stance whether he is with the Taliban or with the nation.

Mr Khuhro, speaking to journalists at his residence, also asked the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister to step down.

“Philosophically, Imran Khan and Taliban are inter-knitted and that’s why he has not uttered a word against them,” the minister said referring to the worst-ever terror attack in Pakistan that left nearly 150 people, including 134 young students, dead at the Army Public School in Peshawar on Monday.

“If he [Mr Khan] is brave, he should proclaim a war against the Taliban,” Mr Khuhro said, and pointed out that no one targeted PTI’s sit-ins over the past four months but schools, students and politicians, including those of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), had continuously been coming under attacks by the Taliban. “This clearly shows that who sides with terrorists and the Taliban,” he argued.

In reply to a question, Mr Khuhro further argued that until recently, Mr Khan had been pressing for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s resignation over the rigging that he (the PTI chief) attributed to the election commission.

“Mr Khan had also kept mum over the Model Town killings and never asked the Punjab chief minister to resign over it,” the senior PPP leader said, and observed that Mr Khan was not asking for the resignation of the KP chief minister, who belongs to the PTI, over the Peshawar carnage.

Mr Khuhro posed a question why the PTI-backed KP government had not registered the carnage FIR.

College inaugurated

The education minister on Thursday inaugurated the Govt Girls Degree College in Naudero.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, he noted that while an estimated 4,200,000 children were going to schools in Sindh, an almost equal number of children were not enrolled yet. He was of the view that if teachers discharged their duties honestly and regularly, there was no reason why their students would not attend classes.

He said the government had not only recruited teachers, but also got the closed schools opened and now it was the duty of people to keep a check on the teachers and help the government deal with absenteeism.

He told the audience that the new girls college, the idea ofwhich had been conceived by slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, was built at a cost of Rs693 million.

Condemning terrorists and anti-democracy forces, Mr Khuhro said people of Sindh would foil all evil designs of such elements and move forward for progress and prosperity.

“Democracy is the only way to run the country’s affairs and we have chosen the same path,” he said.

PPP Larkana district general secretary Abdul Fatah Bhutto and other local leaders also spoke.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2014