PESHAWAR, June 2: The Awami National Party (ANP) has criticized the NWFP government’s stand on the formulation of the National Finance Commission (NFC) award and said that instead of following the federal government’s policy it should have stood by Sindh.

In a press release issued here on Thursday, ANP’s senior vice-president Haji Ghulam Ahmed Bilour said that the NWFP government in its bid to side with the federal government had ignored the Frontier assembly’s unanimously adopted resolution that had called upon the centre to give maximum resources to the federating units and keep with it only what is sufficient to meet its expenditures.

“As per the resolution,” Mr Bilour said “the federating units would divert part of their total resources to the federal government to help it incur its expenditure”.

However, he regretted, the provincial government had ignored its stand as well as the provincial assembly’s resolution by opting to side with the governments of Punjab and Balochistan. The ANP, he said, believed that the NWFP government should stand with Sindh as its stand was in the interest of the people of smaller provinces.

He said the MMA-led NWFP government was strengthening the hands of those who wanted to introduce the presidential form of government in Pakistan.

The ANP, he said, was of the view that NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani should have asked for the establishment of a committee comprising chief ministers of all the four provinces to decide the issue in the interest of the people of Pakistan.