KASUR Aug, 29: Local poets and writers crticised the Auqaf administration on Friday for flawed arrangements at a poetry recital on Aug 26 that was part of the three-day urs celebrations of Punjabi Sufi poet Hazrat Baba Bulleh Shah which concluded on Aug 27.

A meeting of literary figures held at Aiwan-i-Khadim Baldia Chowk, attended by Khadim Ali Khokhar, Majlis Bulleh Shah president, Muhammad Abbas Soz, general secretary, Sharif Anjum, Tajammul Kaleem, Ali Shakir, Abid H.

Mir, Javed Malik and Mudassar Iqbal Butt, said the administration had ignored the poets and writers of Punjabi language, who had volunteered to take part in the saint’s urs.

They said that during the poetry recital the administration kept speakers mute and lights switched off at the venue, while the rest of the area of the shrine was fully illuminated.

The participants also criticized the Auqaf office for allowing dance theatres and death-wells on the premises of a graveyard adjacent to the shrine against Rs500,000.

Dawn also learnt the Auqaf office decreased the urs grant from Rs200,000 to Rs100,000, though the annual collection from the shrine is Rs7.7 million.

The Bullah Shah project that was to complete with the cost of Rs450 million could not be completed even after eight years owing to negligence of the Auqaf department.

Auqaf Assistant Manager Ghulam Ahmed Wattoo said electricity could not be provided to the poetry recital venue because generators were short of fuel. About the cut in the urs grant, he said as the Religious Peace Committee had tasked different philanthropists with arranging facilities for the devotees, there was no need for big grant for the urs.

He said bureaucratic red-tape had delayed the completion of Bulleh Shah project. He said many people living around shrine were not ready to give up their places for the project that also delayed the project which was otherwise to complete in 2008.

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