HYDERABAD: Veteran Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader, former federal minister and former Senator Maula Bux Chandio has rejected the recent statement of Senate Chairman Yousuf Raza Gilani on canal issue, saying that “his personal opinion has nothing to do with the party’s policy”.

Senator Gilani, who is also a key leader of PPP and a former prime minister, had said that his party was not against drawing canals from the Indus, rather it was just expressing its reservations over the canals.

Reacting to Gilani’s statement, M.B. Chandio said that Yousuf Raza Gilani’s statement could be his personal opinion “because PPP’s stance is quite clear that no new canal is acceptable to Sindh”.

Chandio recalled that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had openly opposed the canals project. Then, he said, President Asif Ali Zardari in his address to the parliament’s join session rejected the project. “Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has also been opposing the canals project,” Chandio pointed out, and said that Gilani’s opinion has nothing to do with party’s policy.

He maintained that every child in Sindh was opposing canal project. He termed the issue of new canals from the Indus a matter of life and death for Sindh. He said this project would even impinge upon rights of Punjab’s landowners and farmers.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2025