CHITRAL, March 14: The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and Jamaat-i-Islami failed to strike a deal about seat adjustment in Chitral for the upcoming general elections, sources said.

They said that talks between the leaders of the two religious parties continued for than five hours, however, they couldn’t strike a deal as both the parties were interested in getting seats of provincial assembly.

A source privy to the meeting said that leaders of both the parties exchanged hot words on several occasions during the talks. Both the sides were stuck to their demand of getting the two provincial assembly seats as none of them was interested in the sole National Assembly seat in the district, he added.

The source said that JI leaders were arguing that both the provincial assembly seats were given to JUI-F in the elections of 2002 so that time it should not field its candidates from those two constituencies.

The JUI leaders, however, claimed that they enjoyed support of majority of voters in the district so the party wouldn’t surrender the provincial assembly seats to its former coalition partner, he said.

The source said that leaders of JUI-F termed surrender of provincial assembly seats a political suicide for them.

The sources said that election alliance or seat adjustment between the two religious parties would change the course of politics in the district. The workers of the two parties were disappointed over failure of the talks, he added.

SEMINAR: Quality education played vital role in development of a nation, said general manager of Association for Academic Quality (Afaq), a company publishing textbooks for private schools, Dr Amirzeb Khan. Addressing a seminar entitled ‘Total quality in schools’, he said that the target of quality education could be achieved by a devising an effective strategy.

He lauded the private schools for imparting quality education to students.

Mr Khan said that quality education being imparted by private schools attracted even students of poor families. However, he said that there was still room for improvement.

“The freedom of decision making is in your hand and you can contribute a good deal to achieve the goal for which Afaq has introduced a series of programmes for the capacity building of the principals,” he told heads of the private schools present on the occasion.

The regional manager (training) of Afaq for Malakand division, Zulfiqar Ali, and district coordinator Alamgir Khan also spoke on the occasion. More than 100 principals of private schools attended the seminar.