BAHAWALPUR: Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) Emir Sirajul Haq announced his support for demands of the farming community to make Pakistan an Islamic and welfare state.

He was leading a ‘Kissan Raj March’ from Sadiqabad to Lahore. Passing through the city on Tuesday, the JI chief addressed at a farmer workers’ convention at Azam Chowk on the Karachi-Lahore highway.

Siraj vowed to resolve the farming community’s problems and urged the rulers to strive hard to change the existing system to ensure rights of the oppressed were granted and their issues resolved.

He said the JI stood for the rights of daughters of farmers, who were forced to labour in fields and stressed the need for eradicating poverty and illiteracy from the country.

He regretted that today the poor were forced to sell kidneys as farmers were being given much less for their produce of cotton and sugarcane. He demanded free shelter and interest-free loans for farmers to bring an ‘agriculture revolution’ in the country besides accountability of the corrupt.

Published in Dawn, October 7th , 2015

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