LAHORE, April 13: Nine political parties showed solidarity with the Anjuman Mazareen Punjab at a meeting held here on Sunday.

The meeting, held at the residence of Istaqlal Party chief Manzoor Gilani, also decided to hold a seminar in the city on April 22 to build up pressure on the government for acceding to AMP demands regarding the ownership of farm lands being cultivated by tenants for the last one century.

A public meeting on the issue would be decided later.

The AMP is a representative body of about one million tenants and their families working on state lands across the Punjab. It is active for the last two years for winning ownership rights for the tenants.

The meeting asked the government to release the four AMP leaders “kidnapped” by law-enforcement agencies from the city on April 2. They were chairman Younus Iqbal, secretary-general Dr Christopher John, Sajid Baloch and Faheem.

AMP representatives told the meeting that on the one hand law-enforcement agencies were not admitting “picking up” the four leaders while on the other they had sent Younus Iqbal along with Okara MPA Ashraf Sohna to tenants village on Okara military farms on Sunday (April 13) for “convincing” them to accept a seven-year lease contract instead of the ownership of land.

They also said that defence minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal had arranged a meeting of the four leaders with their families at his residence on Saturday.

The parties whose representatives attended the meeting included the PPP, the ANP, the Istaqlal Party, the Labour Party, the PML-Qasim, the PDP, the Social Democratic Party, and the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party.

Meanwhile, advocates Ehsan Wyne, Manzoor Gilani and Shakeel Pasha would appear before the Lahore High Court chief justice on Monday in a petition for habeas corpus filed for the recovery of the four arrested AMP men.