MANSEHRA, March 31: The provincial president of Pakistan Muslim League-Q, Syed Qasim Shah, has joined Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl to contest election for a National Assembly seat on its ticket.

“With the consent of my previous party’s leaders (Chaudhrys of Gujrat ) I have left their party and joined JUI-F as people of our area are religious and not accepting PML-Q,” Mr Shah told journalists here on Sunday.

Flanked by PML-Q district president Tariq Khan Swati, he said that Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his party JUI-F were popular in the area. “That’s why when I presented my point of view before the Chaudhrys they allowed me to join JUI-F,” he added.

Mr Shah said that he had submitted his nomination papers from NA-20 constituency as a candidate of JUI-F. “I have worked for the people of Hazara, particularly for the people of Mansehra district, as federal minister and I am optimistic that they will vote me to power and I would win the coming election from NA-20 constituency,” he said.

Mr Shah said that leaders of PML-Q and JUI-F were in contact with each other and had no political vendetta.

When his attention was drawn towards the fact that PML-Q leaders were joining other parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Mr Shah said that in the current circumstances majority of PML-Q people were contesting the elections as independent candidates.

He said that a group wanted to introduce the politics of ethnicity and hatred in Mansehra district. Masses would reject such people and vote to power those people, who had clean past and worked for the prosperity and development of Hazara and Mansehra district, he added.

Mr Shah said that he as a federal minister gifted natural gas to the people of Hazara and established a university in the region. He said that he had finalised establishing of an airport in Mansehra but that project could not be materialised because the government was changed.