CHITRAL: The participants at a multiparty meeting convened by Jamaat-i-Islami here on Saturday condemned the unscheduled electricity loadshedding in Chitral, and warned the government of protest demonstrations if prolonged power outages were not stopped.

District leaders of the ruling party PTI, JUI-F, PPP and PML-N and heads of civil society organisations, district bar association, traders and transporters’ unions participated in the meeting.

The speakers, including JI Chitral emir Maulana Jamshed Ahmed, said that there was no justification for the power loadshedding in the district where Golen Gol hydropower station was generating 108MW electricity, out of which 30MW had been allocated for the district by the previous PML-N government.

They said loadshedding would force the consumers across the district to come onto the roads if the government did not end it.

Later, the participants called on deputy commissioner Khurshid Alam Mehsud, who assured them to take up the issue with the authorities concerned.

PROTEST MEETING: On the call of Pakistan Bar Council, a protest meeting was held on Saturday under the aegis of district bar association to protest the government’s move to send reference against Justice Faiz Esa of the Supreme Court to the Supreme Judicial Council.

The meeting was addressed by the leaders of lawyers’ fraternity, including Khurshid Hussain Mughal, Abdul Wali Khan, Alam Zeb, Niaz A Niazi, Mohammad Kausar, Azeem Baig and GH Hasrat.

The speakers came down hard on the government for sending reference against the judges and termed it a tactics to cow down the judiciary.

They said the ‘selected prime minister’ should take a lesson from the former military ruler Gen retired Pervaiz Musharraf who had ultimately lost his power when he confronted the judiciary.

They expressed their resolve that the lawyers across the country would again play their role to foil the ‘ulterior’ motives of the PTI government.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2019