LARKANA: The Jeay Sindh Rehbar Committee — a conglomerate of four Sindhi nationalist parties — has announced that it would hold a march in Larkana on Thursday (Oct 15) against federal government’s plan to create new provinces.
Riaz Chandio, Chairman of the Jeay Sindh Mahaz-Riaz (JSM-R) who heads the committee, made the announcement at a press conference here on Monday.
He said that the ‘Sindh Unity March’ was planned amid widespread fear that Sindh would be divided in several administrative units or new provinces would be carved out from within the provincial territory.
“The march is also aimed against seizure of Sindh’s resources,” he said, while sitting beside his party’s Deputy Secretary General Zulfiqar Baledi and other office-bearers.
‘Usurpation’ of water and other resources by Punjab, PPP’s role in toppling several elected govts criticised
He deplored imposition of emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and strict restriction on people’s movement. “They have been ordered not to leave their homes,” he regretted, and said: “This shows they [the rulers] are afraid of the masses”.
Mr Chandio criticised the home department for imposing Section 144 in the province, and said that the PPP government had, in fact, imposed provisions of martial law and was pursuing acts of dictatorship.
He also condemned police for blocking the rally route of (SUP leader) Zain Shah on Sunday, and warned that if the Rehbar Committee’s march was obstructed this way, the participants would block the Indus and National highways.
Mr Chandio alleged that the PPP was a tool of Punjab and the establishment, recalling that its leadership had toppled the Balochistan government of Sardar Attaullah Mengal; got dismissed the NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) government of Mufti Mahmood through the National Awami Party (NAP); sided with Gen Yahya Khan and helped undermine Shaikh Mujeebur Rahman’s six-point plan for a civilian federation.
The JSM-R chief said that Sindh was gripped in a drought and has a collapsing economy, with agriculture sector destroyed and its people deprived of education, healthcare, employment and food.
On the water issue, he alleged that Punjab was illegally occupying the Indus River while “strategic expansion” of dams was being done. He said Sindh had not been receiving a fair share of water under the 1945 and the 1991 Water Apportionment Accords.
According to him, the 1991 Accord required 10MAF release downstream Kotri, while an international environmental agency recommends 25MAF to save the world’s eighth-largest delta. He said the delta had been destroyed and that six million acres of land in Thatta and Badin districts had been eaten away by sea.
He alleged that Sindh’s electricity and coal were being taken away to Punjab; around 100,000 acres at Gorakh Hills had been seized under the ‘Green Pakistan’ project in the name of tourism; and gas from Larkana and Sukkur divisions was going to Punjab, though Sindh produces 80pc of the country’s gas.
He remarked that “Sindh is not an ‘administrative unit’, but a ‘historical homeland’. He said the 1973 Constitution denies provincial autonomy.
He described new administrative units as a means to entrench the “colonial system” and seize the water, coal and other resources.
“There was no concept of free and fair elections in the country; KP is now being governed through repression despite claims of majority rule; (Balochistan Chief Minister) Sarfraz Bugti is wreaking destruction in his province; corruption, narcotics and banditry has become widespread in Sindh under the PPP’s rule,” he said.
Calling the system ‘fake and artificial’, Mr Chandio said state of emergency, digging of illegal canals, extraction of coal, coastal corridor and ‘blue economy’ were being used by Punjab to take away Sindh’s resources in the name of federation, Islam and democracy.
Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2026
