SUKKUR: The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) held a protest rally and later staged a sit-in in Jacobabad against federal government’s controversial plan to hand over fertile lands to the corporate sector for farming.

The protest was organised by the party’s Jacobabad district chapter.

According to a JUI-F press release, the rally set off from Madressah Qasimul Uloom in Jacobabad and after passing through various thoroughfares culminated near the city’s airport, where the participants held a sit-in. They were carrying party flags and displaying placards inscribed with slogans against corporate farming.

Speaking to them at the sit-in venue, JUI-F Sindh Press Secretary Dr A.G. Ansari, Jacobabad District General Secretary Maulana Saleemullah Brohi and others strongly condemned federal government’s corporate farming plan and vowed to resist it tooth and nail.

They alleged that fertile lands of Sindh, like those in other provinces, were being doled out to foreign firms in the name of corporate farming which would leave hundreds of thousands of local growers and farmers without a livelihood. They observed that the country’s millions of acres were going to be owned by foreigners and their firms. “This is yet another act of betrayal with locals,” Maulana Ansari remarked, and asked the federal authorities to stop this sheer injustice.

The leaders demanded that instead of foreign firms, local growers and farmers should be given these lands.

Prominent among those who participated in the rally and sit-in included JUI-F leaders and activists Hafiz Mir Mohammad Banglani, Dr Khalil Ahmed Khoso, Dur Mohammad Dool, Haji Mohammad Abbas Banglani, Maulana Abdul Wahid Brohi, Abdul Qadir Chhano, Maulana Abdul Malik Ghuniyo, Maulana Nasrullah Ghuniyo, Asadullah Haideri, Maulana Taj Mahmood Bhatti, Irfan Ali Leghari, Maulana Muhakamuddin Brohi, Mohammad Ilyas Brohi, Maulana Siraj Ahmed Dool, Qari Abdul Wahab Lashari, Salar Mir Hasan Buriro, Maulana Maula Bakhsh Bukhari, Qari Riaz Ahmed Tanwari, Mohammad Hanif Buriro and Taj Amroti.

Published in Dawn, Aug 2nd, 2025