ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, while responding to the remarks made by Supreme Court, claimed it would be wrong to say that 'not a single bit of work' was done under National Action Plan (NAP).

Nisar argued that if it were true that NAP has lacked any action since its inception, international think-tanks would not have included Pakistan in the list of countries where acts of terrorism declined over the past year, said a handout issued by the interior ministry on Saturday.

The interior ministry's response came a day after the Supreme Court had termed the NAP "a joke" and had lambasted the government over its inaction over the issue during the past six months.

Nisar said the NAP is not the sole responsibility of a particular department, institution or ministry but that it is a "national agenda" for the success of which numerous ministries of the federal government, intelligence agencies, armed forces and provincial governments are striving.

On some issues the work — which would have taken years — has been done in months, however, the pace on some issues remained slow due to various reasons and needs to be increased, said the minister.

Nisar said a detailed report on the execution of NAP would be presented in the apex court next week.

The progress of the plan so far has been highlighted in the handout issued by the interior ministry. According to which, some 54,376 combing operations have taken place so far, resulting in 60,420 arrests.

Under NAP 3,019 intelligence-based operations were carried out while 1,388 pieces of intelligence were shared. Some 97.9 million mobile sims have been verified using bio-metric technology while 5.1 million sims have been blocked, the handout states.

The handout goes on to say 1,776 cases have been registered and 1,799 arrests have been made so far in the process to prevent the promotion of hateful and provocative material.

Due to the launch of Karachi Operation, terrorism has decreased in Karachi and the law and order situation has improved.

During to the operation, target killing in Karachi has decreased 44 per cent, incidents of murder 37pc, terrorism 46pc, theft 23pc. Furthermore, some 55,962 criminals have been arrested out of which 688 were suspected terrorists, the handout says.