TIMERGARA: The Dir Qaumi Pasoon (DQP), a body formed for rights of the people of Dir districts, on Sunday staged separate protest demonstrations at Chakdara Pul Chowki and Chakdara toll plaza, demanding of the government to rename the Swat motorway and immediately initiate work on Chakdara-Chitral Expressway.

Scores of social and political activists and elders from parts of Lower Dir participated in the demonstrations.

DQP acting convener Jehan Alam Youasfzai, council members Ali Shah Mishwani, Faridoon Khan, Barrister Attaullah Khan, Atta Mohammad Wardak, former minister Bakht Baidar, Maulana Mohammad Nabi Shah, Naeebullah and others spoke on the occasion.

The speakers said the Swat motorway was not only for the Swat district but also for the whole of Malakand division, thus it should be renamed.

They also demanded of the government to establish a new administrative division in Malakand comprising Lower Chitral, Upper Chitral, Lower Dir, Upper Dir and Bajaur districts.

The speakers said they were not opposing the development of Swat or any other district but the under-construction motorway was named as Swat motorway despite the fact that the district was neither its starting nor the ending point.

The University of Malakand and BISE Malakand are both located in Lower Dir district, yet they represent divisional nomenclature, they noted.

The speakers said both the federal and provincial governments had ignored the Lower, Upper Dir and Chitral districts in budgets. They said the DQP would continue its struggle to win the rights of the people of these districts.

LAID TO REST: Two constables of the Elite Force identified as Hidayatullah and Khalilur Rehman, who were martyred in the DI Khan attack, were laid to rest in their ancestral graveyards in Mohammadabad and Banrgay Talash on Sunday evening.

A joint funeral prayer was offered at the government college of commerce and industries, Talash.

Lower Dir district police officer Arif Shahbaz Wazir, DSP Elite Force Haidar Zaman, political leaders and a large number of police officials, area elders and relatives of the martyrs attended the funeral prayers.

The two constables were killed along with other officials and civilians earlier on Sunday when unknown assailants attacked a police post and later carried out a suicide bombing in DI Khan hospital.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2019