ISLAMABAD, Aug 5: The government has decided to rebuild the Jamia Hafsa girls seminary which was demolished last year after the bloody military operation against the militants ensconced in Lal Masjid.

“Construction work will start shortly on a piece of land smaller than the original site in compliance with the Supreme Court order,” a senior official of the local administration told Dawn on condition of anonymity on Tuesday.

“We are just following a clear directive from the Supreme Court to rebuild the seminary. The seminary will be constructed by the Capital Development Authority (CDA),” he said.

A high-level meeting held in the interior ministry on Tuesday took the decision that the Supreme Court's order be implemented immediately. However, the new building of Jamia Hafsa would occupy only 250 square yards and not the vast area it did previously.

Students of the demolished Jamia Hafsa and their supporters had raised the demand for rebuilding the seminary on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Lal Masjid episode which turned into a campaign with the resumption of classes in the open at the demolished site by the management of the seminary headed by Umm-i-Hassan, wife of the incarcerated former Imam of Lal Masjid Maulana Abdul Aziz.

Last Friday the seminary's management pitched tents at the site to give semi-permanent look to the classes and to increase pressure on the government to rebuild their seminary.

Although the government will reconstruct the seminary, the sources said it will have no hostel facilities for students from other cities.

In its heydays, Jamia Hafsa had 4,000 girls on its rolls, of whom 2,500, mostly hailing from northern parts of Pakistan, were provided boarding and lodging at the seminary.

Umme Hassan, the principal of the seminary, had put forward three demands at the Shuhada-i-Lal Masjid Conference last month: release of Maulana Abdul Aziz, her husband and former Khateeb of Lal Masjid, resumption of classes in Jamia Faridia, a boys seminary of Lal Masjid located in Sector E-7, and reconstruction of Jamia Hafsa.

It has become a routine for hundreds of burqa-clad women to demonstrate every Friday outside the Lal Masjid to press those demands.