HYDERABAD, June 10: The Sindh Qaumi Ittehad (SQI) has rejected the 2006-07 federal budget and announced that the Ittehad will hold a rally and stage a sit-in on June 14 outside the Karachi Press Club against the allocation of funds for the construction of new dams.

The announcement came at the end of a meeting of heads of Ittehad’s component parties at a local hotel on Friday.

Acting SQI chairman Gul Mohammad Jakhrani; STPP chairman Dr Qadir Magsi; JSQM chairman Bashir Khan Qureshi; JSM chairman Abdul Khaliq Junejo; Sindh National Congress leader Hussain Bux Thebo and Sindh National Front leader Ayub Shar said that federal government had allocated funds for dams despite the fact that all the three provincial assemblies had rejected the idea.

Mr Jakhrani said that it proved that the rulers were least concerned about peoples’ will and their protests. They should remember that they could not forever keep smaller nations under their subjugation through brute force, he warned.

He advised the rulers to learn a lesson from history and warned if the rulers wanted to save the federation, they would have to guarantee provincial autonomy.

He called the federal budget anti-people and said that a committee had been formed with veteran writer and intellectual, Mohammad Ibrahim Joyo as its head to prepare Sindh’s case on its burning issues.