E-Paper PDF 11th January 2020 (KHI)

CMYK

Saturday, 11 January, 2020 I 14 Jamadi-ul-Awwal, 1441 I Rs 17.00 I Vol X No 192 I 16 Pages I Karachi Edition

DSP among 15 martyreD in Quetta moSQue bombing g

at leaSt 20 otherS Injured In exploSIon that oCCurred In GhouSaBad loCalIty durInG evenInG prayerS

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army ChIef Gen Bajwa SayS ‘thoSe who tarGeted InnoCentS In moSque Can never Be true muSlImS’

musharraf treason case was filed without cabinet's approval, lhC told

STORY ON PAGE 03

NA approves Zainab Alert Bill to curb child sexual assault STORY ON PAGE 02

QUETTA

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STAFF REPORT

t least 15 people, including a senior police officer and the mosque’s imam, were martyred while 20 others were injured in a blast inside a mosque during evening prayers here on Friday.

According to Quetta Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Abdul Razzaq Cheema and hospital sources, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Amanullah and the mosque’s imam were among the deceased in the explosion in Ghousabad neighbourhood of Quetta’s Satellite town.

DSP Amanullah’s son had been martyred in a firing incident a month ago. Amanullah was deployed at the Police training College located on Saryab Road.

Soon after the incident, rescue services arrived at the scene and shifted the injured to the hospital for medical assistance.

Meanwhile, the police cordoned off the

area and started an investigation into the incident to determine the nature of the blast. According to sources, police suspected that the explosion was carried out with an improvised explosive device (IED). the director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, tweeted that Frontier Corps personnel had reached the blast site and were carrying out a search operation along with police.

“Every possible assistance be given to police and civil administration,” the tweet quoted Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa as saying, adding that “those who targeted innocents in a mosque can never be true Muslim.”

Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan, while condemning the incident, said that those who targeted worshippers have no religion or tribal affiliation. “they are only terrorists and deserve the harshest punishment,” he said, adding that state enemies are once again trying to create a law and order sit-

uation in Balochistan. the chief minister said, however, that they would not let anyone destroy the hard-earned peace that had been achieved through the sacrifices of the armed forces and citizens.

Balochistan Home Minister Zia Langove also condemned the blast, saying that “terrorists were scared of Pakistan’s development”.

“Internal and external enemies are making failed efforts to create panic and unrest in the country,” he said in a statement.

Langove vowed that “defeated terrorists will never be allowed to succeed”. He expressed solidarity with the victims and said that no negligence will be tolerated in the medical treatment of the injured. the incident comes three days after a motorcycle parked close to a Frontier Corps (FC) vehicle blew up in Quetta, leaving two people dead and another 14 injured. that blast had come after a respite of some weeks in what has traditionally been a violence-prone area.

Govt, opp agree to recommend new names for CeC STORY ON PAGE 03

Taking heritage for granted: Private company organises wedding at Lahore Fort STORY ON PAGE 05

PM inaugurates Rs510m Azakhel dry port in Nowshera

Pressure builds on Iran as Western powers suggest it downed Ukrainian plane

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'Govt wIll Sell and repurpoSe raIlwayS' land In order to pay for loSSeS aCCumulated In prevIouS reGImeS'

STORY ON BACK PAGE

India's SC orders govt to review all restrictive orders in held Kashmir within a week STORY ON BACK PAGE

STORY ON PAGE 12

CMYK Saturday, 11 January, 2020

02 NEWS

NA APProveS ZAiNAb Alert bill to CUrb Child SexUAl ASSAUlt PERPETRATORS TO GET LIFE TERM WITH RS1M FINE IN MAXIMUM SENTENCE, 10-YEAR IMPRISONMENT IN MINIMUM SENTENCE ISLAMABAD

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STAFF REPORT

He National Assembly (NA) on Friday approved the proposed Zainab Alert, Recovery and Response Bill, 2019, making it mandatory for police officers to take action in a child abuse case within two hours of it being reported.

The bill – which was passed exactly two years after the body of nine-yearold Zainab Ansari, a rape-murder victim, was found in Kasur in 2018 – was presented by Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari in June last year.

Zainab’s rape and murder in 2018 had sparked outrage and protests across the country after she was found dead in a trash heap in Kasur on Jan 9, 2018.

Her case was the twelfth such incident to occur within a 10-kilometer radius in the city over a 12-month period.

In August 2019, a parliamentary committee deferred the passage of Zainab Alert Bill with directions to the government to rationalise the “extreme” punishment proposed for sexual assault

against children. All members of the committee, except a few, had opposed rigorous imprisonment until death for the sexual assault of children. Others had said that rigorous imprisonment with a death sentence was a fitting punishment for individuals sexually assaulting minor children.

Under the bill passed on Friday, the maximum sentence handed down to perpetrators of child sexual abuse will be life imprisonment with a fine of Rs1 million while the minimum sentence will be 10 years.

Further, a helpline will also be established to report missing children while an agency, for issuing an alert for missing children, will also be set up.

The bill also proposes taking action against police officials who cause unnecessary delay in investigating such cases, adding that those who fail to respond to the alert within two hours may also face action.

Speaking during the session, Federal Planning, Development and Reforms Minister Asad Umar said that all cases involving the kidnapping, rape and murder of minor children will be re-

quired to complete investigations within three months. Taking to Twitter, Umar expressed the hope that the bill is also passed in the Senate, adding that protecting the country’s minor children should be the responsibility of the country’s lawmakers as well of the state.

Once the bill is passed by the Senate, it will pave the way for setting up Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Agency where missing child cases will be reported and which will generate an automatic alert.

KASUR KILLINGS: In the last few years, Kasur has been rocked by multiple incidents of abuse, rape and killing of children. In 2015, Kasur’s Hussain Khanwala village had attracted worldwide attention when a child pornography ring was busted. Hundreds of video clips had emerged showing a gang forcing dozens of minor boys and girls to perform sexual acts and filming them.

The gang had also used the videos to blackmail families of the children and extorted millions in cash and jewellery from them.

Last year, once again, the Punjab district came into the limelight after po-

NEW YORK

US diplomat Alice Wells to arrive in Pakistan on Jan 19 NEWS DESK Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells will arrive in Pakistan on January 19 for a three-day visit, the US State Department said.

The visit by Wells will be a part of her 10day visit to the region during which she will travel to Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan, from January 13-22.

In Islamabad, she will meet with senior Pakistani government officials and members of civil society to discuss issues of bilateral and regional concern.

Before arriving in Islamabad, Wells will be in Sri Lanka from January 13-14 during which she will interact with high-ranking officials. “The US envoy will discuss a range of bilateral and regional issues, including shared interests in a free and open Indo-Pacific region that fosters prosperity, democracy, justice, and human rights,” said the statement issued on Friday. Wells will then travel to India, from January 15-18, to attend the “Raisina Dialogue”. She will also meet with senior government officials to “advance the USIndia strategic global partnership” following the success of the 2019 US-India 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, and will discuss “topics of mutual interest with members of the business community and civil society”, the State Department said.

Wells’ last visit to Islamabad in August 2019 had come a day after the Indian government had rushed through a presidential decree to abolish Article 370 of the Constitution that granted special status to Indian occupied Kashmir.

The US Department of State in its statement had said it was “closely following the events in the state of Jammu and Kashmir”.

Pakistan has asked the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to “act decisively” to prevent a “disastrous war” between Pakistan and India.

In a video shared on Friday, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Munir Akram, while addressing the UNSC, said: “Pakistan requests the Security Council and […] the secretary general to act decisively to prevent a disastrous war between Pakistan and India, to call for an end to the grave human rights violations in occupied Jammu and Kashmir and to enable the Kashmiri people to exercise their right of self-determination.” As the UNSC held a debate on Thursday on upholding the UN Charter, Akram informed the security council of the situation in occupied Kashmir. “It is

now over 150 days that 8 million in the Kashmir Valley have been kept under a cruel curfew and a communications blackout by an Indian occupation force of 900,000 troops.

“All Kashmiri leaders remain in jails across India. Thousands of young boys have been abducted, arbitrarily detained, tortured and maimed.

“Women subjected to sexual harassment, humiliation and intimidation, and all protest violently suppressed,” he said, adding that the Pakistani delegation had shared a dossier of reports by journalists and observers which “vividly illustrate the climate of fear and the reign of terror” imposed by India on Kashmiris. The lockdown in the occupied region has crossed 150 days with the security and communication clampdown now in its fifth month.

With international pressure mounting to restore freedoms, Indian authorities claim they have ‘eased’ some restrictions, such as lifting roadblocks and restoring landlines

PESHAWAR STAFF REPORT

lice in September found remains of three minor boys who they suspected were murdered being sexually assaulted.

At the time, Mazari had said it was “shocking to see continuing stories of child abuse victims surfacing in Kasur”.

In a series of tweets, she had said the government’s Zainab Alert Bill has been pending with the National Assembly Standing Committee on Human Rights chaired by PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari “for months now”. Mazari had said her ministry had written to the standing committee to forward the bill to NA but it had not been done so far, terming the situation “frustrating procedures of unnecessary delays in human rights non-political legislation”.

Pakistan urges UN to act decisively to prevent ‘disastrous’ war with India STAFF REPORT

Fiancee hired assassins to kill Sikh youth in Peshawar

and some mobile phone services.

The scenario for 12.5 million Kashmiris, however, is far from normal.

Akram said that signals from India of “aggressive intent” towards the country are also “unmistakable”.

He cited examples of such instances, including the issuance of new political maps by India which lay claim to occupied Jammu and Kashmir as well as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit Baltistan.

Additionally, Akram said India’s foreign minister had “boasted” that they would one day take physical control of the territory.

He noted India’s ceasefire violations along the Line of Control as well as the new Indian army chief’s claims regarding a right to a preemptive attack against Pakistan.

“Pakistan does not want war with India but as we demonstrated last February, if attacked Pakistan will respond resolutely and effectively,” he said.

A Pakistani Sikh youth, who was killed in Peshawar a few days ago, was gunned down at his fiancée’s behest, police said on Friday, confirming the latest development in an incident that was also highlighted by Indian media. According to police, the fiancée was unhappy with the engagement and had, therefore, hired three assassins for Rs700,000. The suspects called the young man to Mardan, where they kidnapped and took him to a nearby colony and killed him. Police also said the suspects shifted his body to Peshawar to remove any links to the murder. However, they added that the fiancée and all three assassins were arrested and the murder weapon recovered.

On Tuesday, Pakistan had summoned the Indian Charge d’Affaires to convey its “strong rejection of baseless and fabricated Indian allegations concerning the Sikh community”, according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA). It had also strongly protested the Indian government’s “motivated and mischievous allegations” relating to the “targeted killing” of the Sikh man in Peshawar. The statement said the allegations were the Indian government’s “desperate attempts” to divert the attention from the atrocities it was committing in occupied Kashmir.

CJP reprimands CAA for mismanagement at airports KARACHI STAFF REPORT

Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed on Friday chided the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for mismanagement at Pakistan’s airports while hearing a case at the Karachi Registry. The Supreme Court has ordered the authority to submit a report on flight delays and compensation given to passengers in two weeks. It has also asked for another report on the security and maintenance of the airports.

“Pakistan’s airports have become dangerous for everyone,” said the top judge. The CAA doesn’t allow anyone to make videos at the airport. “If drugs or smuggled cash is found on anyone, then there is no recording of it,” remarked Justice Ahmed. The CAA additional senior director remarked that the new Islamabad airport is quite big and has many facilities.

“The airport won’t last for long, it could fall apart any day,” the chief justice responded.

SC sets aside increased sentence against former judge, wife in Tayyaba torture case ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

The Supreme Court on Friday set aside the extended three-year sentence awarded to former additional district and sessions judge Raja Khurram Ali Khan and his wife Maheen Zafar for torturing a minor domestic helper, while maintaining the one year sentence, which was handed down by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in April 2018.

The apex court had reserved its judgement on appeals filed by the judge and his wife in May last year. A threejudge bench headed by Justice Mushir Alam had taken up appeals filed by Khan and his wife, who had first been sentenced to a year in jail in April 2018 for keeping the then 10-year-old Tayyaba in wrongful confinement, burning her hand over a missing broom, beating her with a ladle, detaining her

in a storeroom and threatening her with “dire consequences”.

In June 2018, when both convicts appealed against the sentence, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had increased their jail time from one year to three years, with an Rs500,000 fine.

In the verdict announced today, the apex court set aside the three-year sentence and maintained the earlier one-year jail term for the convicts. The written judgment announced in an open court today, authored by Justice Ijaz ul Ahsan, Justice Mushir Alam and Justice Yayha Afridi, presented a similar judgment on both the convicts’ appeals. The court said that the conviction and initial sentence awarded to the convicts will be maintained. “While maintaining her conviction under Section 328-A [of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC)], the sentence enhanced from one-year simple imprisonment to that of three years by the division

CMYK

bench of the [Islamabad] High Court in its judgment dated 11.06.2018 is set aside,” the judgment stated.

However, the verdict stated that the quantum of the sentence for the offense under Section 328-A is the subject matter of another appeal pending before the court and will be decided accordingly.

Section 328-A states that “whoever willfully assaults, ill-treats, neglects, abandons or does an act of omission or commission, that results in or has, potential to harm or injure the child by causing physical or psychological injury to him shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than one year and may extend up to three years, or with fine which shall not be less than twentyfive thousand rupees and may extend up to fifty-thousand rupees, or with both”.

THE CASE: The case of Tayyaba, a young domestic worker employed in

the convicts’ household, first came to light after photos of the tortured child began circulating on social media in 2016. She was rescued from their residence with visible wounds on December 28, 2016, and a first information report was filed against her employers a day later. Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Vice-Chancellor Dr Javed Akram had confirmed at the time that Tayyaba had been tortured.

“During her first visit to the hospital, the child claimed she was burnt while trying to switch on the television.

But the wounds indicated that a hot iron rod had been placed on her arm,” he said at the time. Although Khan had reached a compromise with Tayyaba’s parents on January 2, 2017, the SC took suo motu notice of the matter two days later with the strict warning that “no agreements can be reached in matters concerning fundamental human rights”.

CMYK Saturday, 11 January, 2020

NEWS LAHORE

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STAFF REPORT

He Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday posed questions regarding the legality of the treason case filed against former military strongman General (r) Pervez Musharraf and the formation of the special court that conducted the trial and handed death sentence to the retired general after finding him guilty.

A three-member bench, comprising Justice Syed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi, Justice Mohammad Ameer Bhatti and Justice Chaudhry Masood Jahangir, was hearing a set of petitions filed by Musharraf challenging multiple actions against him, including his conviction for high treason, the establishment of the trial court and filing of the complaint by the government. Barrister Ali Zafar, who has been appointed as the court’s amicus curiea in the case, said that the case against Musharraf seemed to have been filed on the behest of then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, as there is no record of the matter being on the agenda of any of the cabinet meetings held at the time.

“A case under Article 6 cannot be filed without the cabinet’s approval,” Barrister Zafar insisted. The court asked if the matter was on the agenda of any cabinet meeting, to which Zafar responded in the negative.

“None of the cabinet meetings were held on the matter,” Barrister Zafar said.

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MUShArrAF treASoN CASe WAS Filed WithoUt CAbiNet’S APProvAl, lhC told “This was history’s most important matter; can the cabinet discuss it without it being an agenda item?” the bench asked. Justice Bhatti pointed out that during a recent case pertaining to the extension and reappointment of the army chief, the strength of the cabinet was discussed.

“But in Pervez Musharraf’s case, the cabinet’s approval or its role cannot be seen,” the judge said. Justice Bhatti was referring to a recent case pertaining to the tenure of the army chief heard by the Supreme Court, where the bench had inquired how many members of the federal cabinet had approved Prime Minister Imran Khan’s decision to extend the tenure of Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa. “On June 21, 2013, the attorney general sent a summary to the prime minister that a case be prepared against Pervez Musharraf under Article 6,” Barrister Zafar told the court. “The interior secretary was given the authority to file a complaint on December 29, 2013.”

“The case that was prepared was not in accordance with the law, neither was the formation of the special court in accordance with the law,” Zafar said. “The complaint against Pervez Musharraf was

not filed by the lawful authority; the law was violated here as well. According to the law, the cabinet has to nominate the relevant authority which would file the complaint.” “When the formation of the court [that heard the case] is wrong and illegal then all its steps and decisions will be considered illegal.”

JUDGES’ APPOINTMENT TO SPECIAL COURT: Justice Naqvi also inquired how the judges who heard the treason case were appointed. “On what basis were the judges appointed to the special court?” he asked. “Was there a written communication regarding the appointment of judges to the special court or was everything [decided] over the telephone?” “The Ministry of Law and Justice wrote a letter to the Supreme Court registrar [asking] for names of judges to form the special court [bench],” the counsel for the federal government told the court. “When the formation of the court [that heard the case] is wrong and illegal then all its steps and decisions will be considered illegal,” Zafar said.

The court also discussed the charges levelled against Musharraf and the manner in which the trial was conducted.

“The federal government constituted the special court but did not decide how the criminal proceedings will be held,” Barrister Zafar said. “After the 18th Amendment [in] Article 6, it was imperative to amend the 1973 and 1976 laws pertaining to treason.” Zafar said that though a new offence was added in Article 6, its manner of punishment was not decided. “The charge sheet which was filed does not mention Article 6 at all,” Justice Naqvi noted.

“The special court indicted [Musharraf] on the first day the case was heard,” Zafar told the court. “The Supreme Court did not define the relation [of the action] with Article 6 but termed it as an unconstitutional step.” Zafar further said that that the trial was conducted in Musharraf’s absence. “If a person is not joining a trial, the court can, at most, declare him a proclaimed offender,” Justice Naqvi said and added: “Which law allows punishing a person without hearing them?”

Referring to the special court’s verdict, Justice Naqvi said: “Looking at the verdict, everyone who supported [Musharraf] at the time can be accused of abetting.” Barrister Zafar insisted

that “no one can commit an Article 6 offence alone”, saying that “it would be unconstitutional if proceedings are carried out against selected people.” “Can the special court summon other suspects if the federal government does not name them [in the case]?” asked Justice Jahangir, to which Barrister Zafar responded in the negative.

GOVT DIRECTED TO SUBMIT COURT FORMATION SUMMARY: The court asked the federal government to submit a summary of the formation of the special court and directed the state’s lawyer to present arguments on Monday.

The hearing was adjourned until Monday.

A special court of Islamabad had on December 17 handed down the death penalty to Musharraf with a two to one majority after six years of hearing the treason case against him. The case was filed by the PML-N government in 2013.

Musharraf, in his petition, had asked the LHC to set aside the special court’s verdict for being illegal, without jurisdiction, unconstitutional, in violation of Articles 10-A, 4, 5, 10 and 10-A of the Constitution. He sought suspension of the verdict till the decision of the petition.

Govt, Opp agree to recommend new names for CEC ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

The deadlock between the government and opposition parties over the appointment of the Chief election Commission (CeC) has ended as both sides have agreed to recommend new names.

According to informed sources, the government and opposition have withdrawn the names that were proposed earlier and will now forward new nominees to the parliamentary committee in the next few days.

A parliamentary committee meeting is expected next week for the appointments of the CeC and the election Commission of Pakistan (eCP) members. It has been learnt that the government has prepared an initial eight-name list for the CeC and their track records are being checked under scrutiny process. The government had earlier proposed the names of Babar Yaqoob Fateh, Arif Khan and Fazal Abbas Maken while the opposition had recommended Nasir Mahmood Khosa, Jalil Abbas Jilani and Akhlaq Ahmad Tarar

CoAS offers Australia assistance in tackling bushfires RAWALPINDI STAFF REPORT

Army chief General Qamar Bajwa has reiterated his offer to Australia in tackling bushfires raging on the continent’s east coast that have killed at least 26 people. The offer, earlier made to to General Angus John Campbell, Chief of Defence Force, was repeated during a meeting between the COAS and Vice Admiral David Johnston, Australia’s Vice Chief of Defence Forces, at the GHQ on Friday, according to ISPR, the military’s media wing. The bushfires have also destroyed more than 2,000 homes and scorched some ten million hectares (100,000 square kilometres) — an area larger than South Korea or Portugal. The severe conditions have been fuelled by a prolonged drought and worsened by climate change, with experts warning that such massive blazes were becoming more frequent and intense. Australia experienced its driest and hottest year on record in 2019, with its highest average maximum temperature of 41.9 degrees Celsius recorded in mid-December. On top of a damage bill likely to run to billions, analysts expect sentiment, spending and tourism, which accounts for over 3% of the economy, all to take a hit. The statement added that the two commanders also discussed “matters of mutual interest and regional security”.

The visiting dignitary, the ISPR said, appreciated the role of Pakistan Army in ensuring peace and stability in the region, and thanked the COAS for his sentiments towards Australia.

for the top position at the election watchdog.

On Dec 31, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had granted 15 more days to the federal government for the appointment of election Commission of Pakistan (eCP) members.

During the hearing, the court was told that several members of parliamentary committee were unable to attend the meeting on Monday due to dense fog. The rules formed by the previous committee are not suitable in current scenario, legal adviser said.

The IHC chief justice said the court can only expect that the opposition leaders and Prime Minister Imran Khan jointly select names for the posts. Only parliamentary committee can change the rules, he asserted.

The legal adviser said that parliament has ability to handle the situation if it commits any mistake over which, the CJ said that National Assembly should not do any mistake as it is representative of 22 crore people. Subsequently, the hearing was adjourned till January 15.

Sanaullah demands judicial probe into drug case against him ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Punjab President Rana Sanaullah Khan on Friday lashed out at the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government for ‘falsely’ implicating him in a drugs case and urged a judicial commission be made to probe the case filed against him by the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF).

Speaking at the floor of the Lower House after six months in ANF’s detention, Sanaullah claimed he was falsely charged and challenged that evidence against him to be brought to the fore. He maintained that no individual in Pakistan was not safe under the current circumstances. He also swore his innocence on a copy of the Holy Quran during his address. Responding to Sanaullah’s remarks, Minister for Communications Murad Saeed said the ANF was an independent and credible institution but regretted it was targeted after Sanaullah’s bail.

He recalled that the allegations of murder as well as connections with proscribed outfits against Sanaullah were not levelled by the PTI but by the members of his party. He said PTI believes in the rule of law and justice and added that Minister of State Shehryar Afridi would brief the House about Sanaullah’s case.

The Lahore High Court (LHC) in December last year had granted bail to PML-N Punjab president in the drugs case.

Sanaullah, who also served as the Punjab law minister during the previous PML-N government and known for his tough talk, was arrested by the ANF on July 1 from the Islamabad-Lahore motorway near Sukheki.

The ANF claimed to have recovered 15 kilogrammes of heroin and other drugs from his possession in the operation conducted on a tip-off. At least five people, including the driver and the security guard, were also nabbed. Sanaullah had been in the detention of the ANF for over six months.

CMYK

Serious rifts within PMl-N leadership, claims Fawad Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry on Friday claimed that Khawaja Saad Rafique was not welcome in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s party meetings anymore as major rifts existed within the party.

“There are rifts in the PML-N leadership, and I have also heard that party leaders have asked Rafique to not attend PML-N meetings anymore,” he said while addressing an event. The minister prayed for Nawaz Sharif’s health and hoped the former prime minister will return to the country and face cases against him. He said the government had allocated a huge portion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the Science and Technology sector. “We have to efficiently run science departments of schools and colleges across the country,” he said. “Unfortunately, even after being a nuclear power we [Pakistanis] have still not been able to build a TV set,” he said. Talking about the prime minister’s ehsaas Programme, he said the main objective of the government’s initiative was to help uplift the poor. “The opposition parties displayed responsibility in the Army Act amendment,” he said while referring to the recently passed bill.

“We are trying to build a consensus with the opposition over National Accountability Bureau (NAB) ordinance, and will also consider their rightful demands,” Fawad said. He continued his criticism of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) saying that the institution was a powerful one but had failed to live up to its role. The council was also not able to prove itself responsible in several matters, he remarked. NEWS DESK

04 KARACHI

Saturday, 11 January 2020

WEATHER UPDATES SATURDAY

230C 100C

SUNDAY

220C 120C

MONDAY

230C 120C

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karachi: Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed visited the Supreme Court’s Karachi Registry on Friday amid high security. oNlINe

Murad supporTs privaTisaTion subjecT To eMployees and consuMers' proTecTion

KARACHI

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STAFF RePoRT

INDH Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, in a meeting with a seven-member delegation of Privatisation Commission of Pakistan, led by Federal Minister for Privatisation Mohammadmian Soomro, said that his government was supporting two RLNG power projects and banks privatisation if the rights of employees and consumers were protected properly.

Federal Minister Mohammadmian Soomro led a delegation comprising Member Privatisation Commission (PC) Khurram Shahzad, Financial Adviser Rabial Akhundzad, Samreen Zehra, Consultants Asad Rasool, Zayed Maud and others called on the Sindh chief minister on Friday at CM House. The chief minister was assisted by Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, PSCM Sajid Jamal Abro, SMBR Qazi Shahid Parvez, Secretary Finance Hassan Naqvi, Secretary Energy Musadiq Khan, Secretary Investment.

Soomro said that the federal cabinet had fi-

nalised some of the projects, banks and real estate assets for privatisation. He added that since those projects were national assets, therefore, he wanted the take provincial governments into confidence for their privatisation.

Soomro said that the projects for which bids have been invited include two RLNG based power plants at Haveli Bahadur Shah and Balloki respectively. He added that each of the plants has the capacity of generating 1,230 MW electricity. The other projects were SME Bank Ltd and First Women Bank.

The chief minister said that the power tariff of both the powers plants must be protected so that the private party, after privatisation, could not charge a high rate for power generation. He added that similarly, the commission has to protect the employment and rights of the employees working there.

Murad said that as far as SME Bank and First Women Bank’s privatisation was concerned, he repeated his request for protecting the rights and employment of the people working in the bank. He also insisted on processing the entire privatisation process transparently and his government would be supporting the commission.

The Privatisation Commission chairman also said that the cabinet has approved the privatisation of the real estate’s assets such as Services Intel Hotel Lahore, Jinnah Convention Centre Islamabad, Divestment of Minority sharing in leading oil and gas, OGDC and PPL and others.

While welcoming the delegation, the chief minister said that his government has no objection in their privatisation but just he wanted transparency and protection of their employees.

Three children die as school wall collapses in Mithi MITHI APP

Three children lost their lives on Friday when a dilapidated wall of a school collapsed at village Bhooro Saand of Teshil Nangarparkar of district Tharparkar. According to details, the deceased children- 6 year old Ambreen, Mukeema, 6, and her 4 year old brother Ali Raza- were returning to their homes after learning Quran when the wall collapsed killing the children instantly. The heirs of the children said the wall was in a dilapidated condition and despite repeated complaints about its hazardous condition, concerned officers of education department did not take any remedial action. In November last year, plaster on the roof and walls of a classroom in a public school in Mirpurkhas had fallen off, while the school was in session.

Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident.

Educationists and activists have on many occasions raised the issue of the dilapidating infrastructure of public schools in the province, but the situation has largely remained unchanged for the past several years. Pakistan has 22.8 million out-of-school children, of which 28 per cent are in Sindh. The province also has the second lowest gross enrolment ratio and net enrolment rates at all education levels in the country.

Minor boy killed, two injured in armed attack KARACHI STAFF RePoRT

NAB forms JIT to probe Khursheed Shah in assets beyond means case SUKKUR INP

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) formed a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on Friday to investigate the matter pertaining to assets beyond means case against Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) stalwart Syed Khursheed Shah.

According to details, a fivemember JIT has been constituted to hold an inquiry against the PPP central leader following the approval of the NAB Chairman Jus-

tice (r) Javed Iqbal.

The JIT will be headed by NAB Multan Director General (DG) Atiqur Rehman and it will comprise Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) representative Abdul Hafeez, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Deputy Registrar Rizwan Haroon, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) circle-in charge Sajjad Mustafa Bajwa and Deputy Director Investigation Abdul Hassan.

The hearing of this case is adjourned till Jan 17.

CMYK

A minor boy was killed and two other persons of a family were injured in the firing of unidentified armed men in the city in the early hours of Friday.

According to police sources, the firing incident occurred at Gharibabad Mohalla near Jamali Goth and resulting in the death of a minor, Maid Jamali, aged 6, and injuries to Shazia, aged 25, wife of Sajan Jamali, and Yaseen, aged 4, son of Taj Muhammad. The accused managed to escape from the crime scene. The body of the deceased and the injured were taken to a nearby hospital. Police sources said that the attackers and the victimised family are close relatives, who originally belong to Shahdadkoat and the matter seems to be of personal enmity. Sohrab Goth Police Station Station House Officer (SHO) said that a case has been registered and further investigation started.

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

Horticulture exporters fear Huge losses as transporters’ strike continues ISLAMABAD

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GHULAM ABBAS

S the transporters’ strike continues, horticulture exports fear that they may face huge losses as perishable items in containers stuck at various places for the past one week are rapidly degrading. According to office bearers of All Pakistan Fruit and Vegetable Exporters, Importers and Merchant Association (PFVA), all containers of oranges, potatoes and onions are still en-route from parts of Punjab and Sindh to Karachi Sea Port.

These containers, worth $1500,000, are operating using either the main electric supply or standby generators for maintaining a specific temperature to ensure that the quality of perishable items remains intact. However, PFVA’s Waheed Ahmed, says that it is becoming difficult for them to ensure continuous electric supply to these containers due to frequent power interruptions and breakdown of generators.

“It is difficult to ensure a constant temperature in containers stuck on main highways and connected roads in Sindh and Punjab,” he said.

Waheed said that if the strike continues, it would not only affect the quality of the perishable cargo badly but it would also impact the cost of each container as there is a possibility of foreign buyers to switch their orders to India. “The importers cannot wait so long and this means the exporters will suffer huge losses. This country desperately needs valuable foreign exchange,” he added.

While the horticulture sector is likely to suffer the most, other sectors too have expressed their con-

cerns. Goods of export-oriented industries are ready to be shipped but the exporters are facing difficulty in finding containers and transport vehicles to move them to ports. Exporters claim that if export shipments are not dispatched timely, they will have to resort to air shipments and that would cause an exceptional financial burden on them.

It is worth mentioning here that a countrywide strike of transporters against a new regulation and imposition of heavy fines entered its fifth consecutive day on Friday, though government officials said they were hopeful of resolving the issue soon. The communications ministry recently enforced a new axle load control regime to address the problem of overloading that can cause accidents or damage highways. However, goods transporters have been demanding the restoration of axle load law as per the National Highway Safety (NHS) Ordinance, 2000.

Transporters say they have taken 400,000 vehicles off the road to protest the new regulation. “Our drivers are fined up to Rs10,000 in the name of online verification of their licenses which are issued by government authorities. Besides, they are also fined for overloading vehicles despite the fact that the law dealing with the issue has not even been promulgated,” Imdad Hussain Naqvi of the All Pakistan Goods and Transporters Association said in a statement.

According to United Goods Transport Alliance Chairman Ghulam Yaseen, the previous fine of Rs500 had now been raised to Rs5, 000.

The authorities were also making changes in the axle load conditions from time to time, which should be settled once and for all, he stressed.

“By imposing heavy fines, the authorities are not saving the roads,” he said.

NEWS 27pc health budget increased in current year: Buzdar LAHORE APP

Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar has said that 27 per cent increase had been made in the health sector budget, along with start of several health projects in farflung areas during the current financial year. He was presiding over a meeting of the Specialised Healthcare & Medical Education Department at his office here on Friday to review departmental performance and progress made by the department on mega health projects. The CM said that every possible effort will be made for betterment of the health sector. He regretted that the backward areas had been neglected in the past. He said that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government was following the policy of composite development in every sector.

Usman Buzdar directed the authorities concerned that Nishtar Hospital-2 project in Multan should be completed at the earliest. He said that he would visit the hospital site during his next visit to Multan district. The hospital is being built with around Rs 8 billion.

The CM said that construction of the hospital building would be completed by the next year, adding that matters of the Institute of Cardiology, Dera Ghazi Khan would also be settled as soon as possible.

05

Tobacco industry caused Rs153bn loss in three years ISLAMABAD SHAHZAD PARACHA

The country’s tobacco industry caused a whopping Rs153 billion loss to the national exchequer from 2016 to 2019.

This was informed by Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids Country Representative Malik Imran Ahmad while addressing a session titled ‘Loss of revenue because of deceptive tactics of the tobacco industry’, organised by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), Human Development Foundation (HDF) and Pakistan National Heart Association (PANHA) on Friday.

Ahmad pointed out that the tobacco industry was awarded a low tax rate while adjustments were made in the prices of its most sold brands.

He further said that after the introduction of the third tier, around 160 billion cigarettes were produced between May 2017 and March 2019, adding that big tobacco companies share 75pc of the total market, which means they were able to sell 120 billion cigarettes in the same period.

Loss in revenue due to the introduction of the third tier (low tobacco taxes) stood at Rs77.85 billion from 2016 to

2019, while loss of revenue due to price adjustments was Rs75 billion from 2018 to 2019.

“Local manufactures of cigarettes have their representation in the Senate and National Assembly and big companies even approach the prime minister to plead their case regarding taxation on tobacco products in Pakistan,” Malik lamented.

Waseem Saleem, a senior economist from the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC), said that the large fiscal imbalances in Pakistan require greater tax revenues.

“Tobacco taxation can positively contribute to government revenues.

Simultaneously, these taxes will also help promote public health objectives.”

He said that the level of under-reporting of cigarette production in Pakistan has significant negative implications for government tax revenue.

Revenue loss due to undeclared production is estimated to be Rs31 billion and by including GST revenue, it becomes Rs37 billion.

He added that the volume of illicit trade is very low as compared to the claims made by the tobacco industry. “The annual economic cost of smoking in Pakistan is as high as Rs143.208 billion.”

PM's nephew Hassaan Niazi gets in Pakistan seeks immediate de-escalation spat with citizen after car collision of US-Iran tensions ISLAMABAD MIAN ABRAR

In order to avoid getting entangled in international conflicts, Pakistan has decided against mediating between Iran and the United States but seeks immediate de-escalation of tensions between the two countries to prevent a war in the Middle East.

An informed source told Pakistan Today on the condition of anonymity that Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi would depart on his diplomatic mission for Tehran on January 12.

“The Foreign Office (FO) is working on scheduling meetings of the foreign minister in Tehran, Riyadh and Washington over the next week. After Tehran, Qureshi would be visiting Riyadh on January 13.

On January 16 and 17, the minister would be visiting Washington,” the source said.

When asked about the objective of the foreign minister’s visit to the Gulf region, the official said that the foreign minister was going with an open mind.

“He would listen to the ideas of friendly states in the thick of things and then would contemplate if we can help them come closer. But for the time being, mediation is a huge ask and we do not find ourselves fit for this task. You know even the peace deal brokered by P5 countries under United Nations (UN) had failed. So mediation is an inappropriate word for our effort,” the official clarified.

Asked why Pakistan was so eager to be the only country on earth to launch diplomatic efforts for a de-escalation between US and Iran, the official said that both Iran and US were friendly countries of Pakistan.

“We are partners in peace, not in conflicts. We do not thrive on wars. We are looking for efforts to develop and also to support regional development. Any conflict in the region would not only destabilise the region but also it would affect Pakistan,” the official said.

It merits mention here that FM Qureshi

has contacted his counterparts from Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar and other gulf states and he would be soon departing for a diplomatic overture to help calm down the situation.

When asked to elaborate, the official said that any conflict between Iran and US may affect the Afghan peace process.

“You know that the US and Iran are major stakeholders in Afghanistan. So any conflict between the two may have fallout in Afghanistan. We have made tangible progress in the Afghan peace process and we want to take the Afghan peace dialogue to a logical conclusion,” the official said.

The official also said that Iran enjoyed good influence in Afghanistan and even the Afghan Taliban had a strong relationship with the Iranian government.

“You know that the US troops are present in huge numbers. We also know that groups linked to Iran may target US troops in Afghanistan. Hence, any such incident may ignite a new war in Afghanistan. Pakistan would like to see peace talks progressing in Afghanistan,” the official added.

The official further said that a regional conflict may also shift world focus from Indian Occupied Jammu (IOK) that is closely being monitored by the UN and its allied organisations as Indian state terrorism continues there.

“Indian regime right now is in a thick soup. Today is the 160th day of state curfew imposed on Kashmiris in IOK. Though Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime staged a drama by taking some right-wing MPs from European Union (EU) to IOK but the EU distanced itself, calling it a private visit. Moreover, the visiting delegation was also not allowed to meet none of top Kashmiri leaders or the public at large and a select group of pro-regime people had met them,” the official said.

The source said that the media spotlight was also on the anti-Modi protests across India and police torture on peaceful protestors who are raising their voice against CAA and NRC laws.

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s nephew Barrister Hassaan Niazi was all over the social media on Friday after a controversial video showed him arguing with a driver after his car collided with another one.

The incident reportedly took place outside the gate of Lahore Gymkhana. The two cars collided as both were trying to enter the same gate at the same time.

In the video, a furious Niazi can be seen forcibly taking the keys from the other person’s car and arguing with him. Police officers at the scene tried to intervene by urging the prime minister’s nephew to calm down.

Talking to the media, Niazi confirmed that his car did have a colli-

sion with the other vehicle. The lawyer said he had complained to the club administration about the incident. He said after a ‘minor spat’, the issue was resolved. Taking to Twitter, Niazi said he had been punched but a couple of news channels had bashed him before taking his version of the event.

“My car was hit. I got punched. I called the security. I filed the complaint. And media bashing me even after issue has been resolved. First they played news then decided to take my version,” he tweeted.

Niazi is nominated in one of the two first information reports (FIRs) registered for vandalising a police car parked outside the Punjab Institute of

Cardiology (PIC).

According to the police, the case was registered after they “found Niazi damaging a police car in the CCTV footage they had obtained”.

Last month, a group of more than 200 lawyers, following an earlier quarrel with the PIC staff that escalated into a brawl, had stormed the hospital, vandalised property and damaged dozens of vehicles. They had also set ablaze a police van during their assault.

Three people had lost their lives amidst the mayhem as doctors abandoned their patients to escape the mob.

On December 20, an ATC had granted interim bail to Niazi in the PIC attack case. NEWS DESK

Taking heritage for granted: Private company organises wedding at Lahore Fort LAHORE SHAHAB OMER

Taking heritage for granted, a private company, Fatima Fertilizers Company Limited, took permission from the Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) to hold a corporate dinner at the historic Lahore Fort’s Royal Kitchens and illegally conducted a wedding ceremony instead of the planned event.

The issue was raised on social media where people from all walks of life expressed their concern over the horrific misuse of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

When contacted, WCLA Director General Kamran Lashari said that a First Information Report (FIR) has been lodged against the company. He also said that Bilal Tahir, the in-charge of Lahore Fort, had been suspended from his duties until the completion of an inquiry against him. “We have con-

CMYK

fiscated the security deposit and we will also seek a penalty from the company,” he added. He further said that WCLA has never allowed any entity to hold weddings or birthdays at heritage sites.

It is worth mentioning here that the WCLA DG had earlier spoken to Geo TV and had told them that no wedding was held at the heritage site, instead a private function was arranged by a company.

According to documents available with this scribe, Fatima Fertilizers Company Limited had originally requested a permit for a private dinner on January 9 at the Royal Kitchens of Lahore Fort for 100 guests.

The permit was subsequently issued for a corporate dinner of 100 guests against a fee of Rs500,000 with a number of conditions.

“The competent authority is pleased to grant permission for a private dinner at Royal Kitchens, Lahore

Fort on January 9 against an amount of Rs500,000 and security amounting to Rs100,000 refundable through pay order after the event,” the permit letter stated.

The letter also explicitly stated that fireworks, firecrackers, live cooking, oil lamps, aerial firing would not be allowed at any place inside the monument.

Moreover, it restrained the guests and hosts from fixing any hooks and nails in any structure or using glue, paint, and tape against the historical structure. It also explicitly stated that nobody would be allowed to scratch the furniture.

“Electricity and security will be arranged by the organiser and nobody would be allowed to conduct recordings for any commercial activity as no commercial activity is allowed. The structure arches and glass doors should not be damaged or pasted or nailed with any kind of material.

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

06 WORLD VIEW

Is IndIa stIll a democracy? new StateSman

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KAPIL KOMIREDDI

ARENDRA Modi received a letter last summer. It was signed by 49 writers, filmmakers, scholars, and artists. Describing themselves as “proud Indians”, they beseeched the prime minister to put an immediate halt to the public lynchings of Muslims and of Dalits – formerly “untouchable” people, deemed so impure by the scriptures that they are placed outside the hierarchical Hindu caste system – and urged him to end the castigation of critics of his government as “anti-national”.

“These are not the Middle Ages,” they wrote, reminding Modi that there “is no democracy without dissent”. The prime minister remained silent and the letter appeared to go unnoticed by the public – until a judge in eastern India accepted the petition of a Modi-worshipping busybody who alleged that signatories to it had “tarnished the image of the country and undermined the impressive performance of the prime minister.”

One of the signatories to the letter was the historian and Gandhi biographer Ramachandra Guha, an esteemed public intellectual in India. In December 2019, months after the letter was published, Guha stood alone outside Bangalore’s Town Hall. He was there to protest Modi’s decision to amend India’s citizenship law.

The amendment will grant expedited citizenship to religious minorities from neighbouring countries already present in India, but excludes Muslim refugees.

Modi’s activation of Section 144 in

Bangalore – a colonial penal code that prohibits the assembly of more than four persons – did not deter Guha. He was one the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have poured into the streets over the past four weeks across the country to object to India’s conversion into a Hindu state. The police have truncheoned, detained and shot dead protesters. When Guha began speaking to a television interviewer, three uniformed men descended on the scene and dragged him away.

Compared to other critics of the Modi government, Guha was lucky. Yet his arrest seemed like the moment when India formally migrated to a post-democratic reality. In the year that the government celebrated the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, Modi invoked the same draconian penal code that British colonial authorities used to detain Gandhi in order to imprison his biographer.

Though pluralism was long the linchpin of India’s robust democracy, Modi has recast the republic as a Hindu nation. He has bullied critics, silenced dissidents, and suffocated the press into endorsing his sectarian vision for modern India.

During a visit to London in 2018, Modi declared that he “welcomed criticism”. “In a democracy, if there is opposition but no criticism, then how can it be called a ‘democracy’”, he asked. “Criticism is the beauty of democracy.” Yet in a country with thousands of newspapers and hundreds of television channels dedicated exclusively to news, dissent — with some notable exceptions — has shrunk to the point of near-extinction.

Primetime television shows on the mostwatched networks are packed with panellists who trip over one another to praise the prime minister. “Influential owners, anchors, editors across the nation,” the journalist Krishna Prasad observed in The Hindu, serve as an “advance party to quell dissent, manufacture consent, set

A measured Iranian counterstrike opens the door for de-escalation with US

the agenda, drum up support, and spread fear, venom, hatred, and bigotry — sometimes through sheer silence.” Prasad was eased out of his job editing Outlook, one of India’s best-known English language magazines, after he scrutinised Hindu nationalists too vigorously. India’s media, Prasad went on to write in The Hindu, is “gasping under pressure not felt even during Emergency’s darkest nights”, referring to the 21 months following Indira Gandhi's suspension of the constitution in 1975. Indira Gandhi shackled the press.

Modi has co-opted it.

2017 was the year that Modi consolidated his hold over the media. In June that year, officers from India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), a body notorious for doing the bidding of politicians, raided the home and offices of journalists Radhika and Prannoy Roy. Radhika Roy co-founded NDTV, one of India’s last remaining bulwarks of independent broadcast journalism, in 1987.

According to the CBI, Roy and her husband had defaulted on 3.5bn rupees loaned from a private bank almost a decade before. That the bureau was determined to recoup a sum on behalf of a private lender, when India’s own state banks are owed far more by the country’s oligarchs, was mystifying (NK Singh, a former head of the CBI, questioned the true purpose of the raid). Modi is obsessed with NDTV and English language journalists who covered the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002, when he was chief minister of Gujarat. A year before the CBI raided Roy’s residence, the government accused NDTV’s Hindi station of imperilling India’s national security, forcing it off air for a day after the station – like many others – reported on a terrorist attack in Pathankot in Punjab.

The raids didn’t end with Prannoy Roy. In 2018, tax authorities descended on the properties of Raghav Bahl, a media

Stunning tales from India’s military history

Stratfor The dust is beginning to settle in the aftermath of the Jan. 8 Iranian ballistic missile attacks on two U.S. military bases in Iraq. With no reported casualties among U.S. personnel and Iran's indication that it has now concluded its military response to the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. strike, the door is open for the short-term de-escalation of the brewing confrontation between the two countries. The United States could yet decide to respond militarily to the Iranian attack on its bases, but with Washington seeking to avoid stumbling into a war with Iran, the lack of U.S. casualties makes it more politically feasible for the White House to opt for a non-military response, such as additional sanctions.

Nevertheless, even if the United States elects to stand down, a prospect that is still not certain, the potential for further military clashes will remain significantly elevated over the long term. Two issues drive this risk. First, Iran and its proxies are unlikely to cease their attacks across the region, whether directly against U.S. assets and personnel or against U.S. allies. The U.S. economic sanctions that are driving this aggressive Iranian strategy will remain in place and may even intensify.

Iraq, in particular, could present a theater for action, as Iranian-allied Iraqi militias have also been galvanized by the recent U.S. strikes and likely will be keen to seek retribution. If an attack by those militias kills a U.S. soldier or contractor in Iraq or Syria, the risks of escalation to a direct military exchange between the United States and Iran would again climb. After all, the United States will hold Iran responsible for the actions of some of its allied militias, especially the mostly Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

Second, beyond escalatory military exchanges, Iran's continued development of its nuclear program and its removal of limitations on enrichment and stockpiling significantly elevates the potential for longer-term military confrontation. Although Iran insists that the periodic acceleration it has undertaken with its nuclear program is reversible, the United States and Israel will be more likely to seriously consider military strikes against Iran's nuclear program to ensure Iran does not approach a nuclear weapons breakout stage too closely.

The existence of these triggers for potential escalation and the atmosphere of tension that will linger between the two adversaries keeps the longterm risk of a military confrontation alive, even if their current face-off goes no further.

proprietor whose publications have taken a balanced editorial line towards the Modi government. In June, the enforcement directorate, the government body responsible for economic crimes, charged Bahl with money laundering. Two months later, Prannoy and Radhika Roy were detained by authorities at Mumbai airport.

The objective, it seemed, was more to humiliate and frighten the Roys – who had bought return tickets – than to prevent them fleeing the country. Shortly afterwards, the CBI lodged a fresh case against the couple.

On a recent afternoon, I met Prannoy Roy in his Delhi office. Though he put on a plucky face, he seemed shattered within. Advertisers were pulling their spots from NDTV; business relationships built over decades were collapsing. Revenues from government advertising – a major source of income for all media houses – had practically dried up. The CBI had recently questioned both Prannoy and Radhika about a $150m investment the American corporation NBC made in NDTV’s non-news ventures shortly before the financial crash of 2008.

According to the CBI, the investment was evidence of a money-laundering scheme for “unknown public servants in India” – accusations that Roy argues are risible.

When we spoke, Roy expressed his frustration that NBC – whose cable news network MSNBC has repeatedly skewered Donald Trump for attacking the press – has not stood in solidarity with NDTV. Though Roy was confident that NDTV would prevail, the threat of arrest continues to haunt him and Radhika.

Elsewhere, Modi’s government has harassed outliers and silenced critics.

Karan Thapar, one of India’s sharpest television interviewers, was one of the few journalists who unnerved Modi with his direct questioning in an interview after the 2002 violence in Gujarat. Payback

came in April 2017, when India Today TV, Thapar’s former employer, refused to renew his contract. A few months later Bobby Ghosh, editor of the Hindustan Times who introduced an online “hate tracker” that logged sectarian violence under Modi, lost his job following a meeting between Modi and the owner of the broadsheet.

An atmosphere of self-censorship has pervaded many of India’s newsrooms.

The government’s information and broadcasting ministry has a large department monitoring news channels across the country. And what remains of India’s fourth estate is being repurposed into a PR service for the government. While the careers of Modi’s critics have tapered away, the prime minister’s champions have prospered. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an investor from southern India whom the BJP later nominated to the upper house of parliament, recently helped launch an unabashedly pro-Modi television news channel called Republic. Its chief anchor, Arnab Goswami, behaves like a bully with an outsized pulpit.

In 2019, many well-heeled media personalities in Delhi and Mumbai were appalled when India was ranked 140 in the World Press Freedom Index published

by Reporters Without Borders. That the world’s largest democracy was ranked so low was, to them, proof of an international conspiracy to discredit Modi. Many now loudly denounce the aggressive coverage of the prime minister as a left-wing conspiracy against India, from foreign publications that once swooned over Modi. What such fulminations don’t account for is all that is happening around them in India: the silencing of critics, the hacking apart of intrepid reporters and the quashing of dissent. The democratic content of the republic is being hollowed out, but the people believing themselves to be the guardians of democracy are concerned most of all with image. India, you see, has become Modified.

Kapil Komireddi is a writer and author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India (Hurst, 2019).

JAIRAM RAMESH’S BRILLIANT NEW BIOGRAPHY TELLS THE STORY OF V K KRISHNA MENON, WHO IS REVILED AND DEMONISED IN THE BJP-RSS WORLDVIEW AS THE ‘VILLAIN OF 1962’ Print SHEKHAR GUPTA

Much folklore has grown around V.K. Krishna Menon, India’s second-most powerful politician in the 1950-60 decade. He is a reviled and demonised figure, the ‘villain of 1962’, especially in the BJPRSS worldview. It’s wonderful, therefore, that we now have a brilliantly researched biography of Menon by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh.

Was he an angel or demon? Neither, as Ramesh’s research in his aptly named 725-page tome ‘A Chequered Brilliance’ shows. He could be brilliant, as in the UN over Kashmir; eminently skillful, as in persuading Chinese premier Chou En-lai in 1955 to return American Air Force prisoners of the Korean War; and also display the “pettiest and meanest” mind in his dealings with Army generals as India’s most controversial defence minister yet.

That Krishna Menon — a case of extreme vanity, arrogance and insecurity laced with self-pity — became Jawaharlal Nehru’s kindred soul from the 1930s on is well-known.

It is also amazing how much they shared with each other. In 1939, for example, Nehru wrote a long, distraught letter to Menon complaining about his failing physical health. He added, however, that his constitution was strong and he may ride it out.

But what worried him much more was the state of his mental health. Ramesh guesses that this must have been around time Indira would have told him

she wanted to marry Feroze Gandhi.

However, for us children of the 1960s, the most fascinating, and for today’s generation the newsiest section of the book, is the five years Menon served as defence minister and second-most powerful man in Nehru’s Cabinet (1957-62).

Ramesh’s use of the description “pettiest and meanest” specifically refers to how Menon put up the second senior-most Army officer, Lt Gen. P.N. Thapar, into making allegations against his own chief K.M. Thimayya (13 charges, including leaking classified information, loose talk about the prime minister, and hobnobbing with arms dealers), and another five-point ‘charge-sheet’ on Lt Gen. S.P.P. Thorat, widely seen as Thimayya’s preferred choice as his successor.

In his letters to them, one his boss and the other his equal, Thapar mentioned that he was doing this with the prime minister’s knowledge, and he would greatly appreciate hearing their side of the story too. Ramesh concludes, and I think quite rightly, that Menon, who detested Thimayya, had put Thapar up to it, and also taken Nehru into confidence.

Wheels of fratricidal conspiracies were moving fast.

Knowing Menon would veto his choice Thorat, Thimayya wrote his recommendation directly to President Rajendra Prasad as Supreme Commander. He promptly approved it too. The Republic was still settling down, and nobody quite understood the Rashtrapati’s powers. Not even Prasad himself. Nehru and Menon closed ranks to reject it.

If you think this wasn’t already a divided Army in the run-up to a war, more conspiracies emerged. First, Thimayya wrote a letter complaining he had information of some “smell” about another lieutenant general, S.D. Verma. Then, after Verma had been moved out punitively, Thimayya came to Menon to say that he had erred. The only ‘smell’ about Verma was that he wasn’t too popular.

Menon recorded this in his notes to Nehru.

Next was against another top officer, Sam Manekshaw, then commanding the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu. It was again the charge of ‘loose talk’ and Anglophilia, to the extent that Manekshaw had “hanged portraits of Warren Hastings and Robert Clive” in his office. His career was nearly ruined

too as Menon sidelined him and ordered an inquiry.

It cleared him subsequently, or the history of 1971 may have been different.

One of the biggest stories of that period has morphed into much folklore as a Thimayya-versusNehru, Army-versus-politician saga over the decades, which Narendra Modi referred to in his last Karnataka campaign as Nehru’s humiliation of local hero Thimayya.

Ramesh’s documents throw up three surprises: One, that The Statesman scooped the story of Thimayya’s resignation in 1959. It was under Mahesh Chandra’s byline. Ramesh, however, establishes that Gen. J.N. Chaudhuri (who later became COAS), had moonlighted anonymously as military correspondent for more than a decade for the thenBritish owned The Statesman. He was on the inside track of this resignation, but could not have written the story himself and passed it on. Think, a serving top general working as a leading paper’s military correspondent incognito.

Second, there are stunning notes from the personal archives of then-British High Commissioner Malcolm MacDonald, detailing how Thimayya was sharing with him all his problems with Menon, Nehru, the resignation plans, and much classified information. Like how Thimayya thought Menon deliberately painted Pakistan as India’s main enemy and threat, and played down China. All of which MacDonald was dutifully reporting back to London.

And third, true to what’s come to be believed later, India would not have lost that war in 1962 if Nehru and Menon had listened to Thimayya. But not because he was so brilliant he would have won. But because he was prescient and insisted — even writing five months after his retirement — that there was no way the Army could protect India from the Chinese. And that this had to be done by politicians and diplomats.

All the stories of a bumbling Nehru led by a paranoid and compulsive conspiracy-theorist Menon are true. The notion that, left to the generals, India would have done much better in that war is shown up as an awful myth. The generals of that period were too busy and too good at fighting each other to have time left for the Chinese. And we haven’t even mentioned a Lt Gen. B.M. Kaul yet.

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

FOREIGN NEWS 07

iraq’s top shia CleriC fears worse bloodshed as us-iran ConfliCt persists BAGHDAD/DUBAI

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AGENCIES

RAQ’S top Shi’ite Muslim cleric on Friday condemned the U.S.Iranian confrontation taking place on Iraqi soil, saying it risked plunging the war-ravaged country and the wider Middle East into deeper conflict.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said attacks by both sides inside Iraq this month showed blatant disregard for its sovereignty and its people stood to suffer most from Washington and Tehran’s conflict. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi asked Washington to come up with a plan for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, his office said, according to a Washington Post report.

The latest flare-up in the long shadow war started with the U.S. killing of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, in an air strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3.

Iran responded on Wednesday by firing missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq. In the aftermath, both sides backed off from intensifying the conflict but the region remains tense, with Iranian military commanders threatening more attacks.

Neighboring Iraq looks set to bear the brunt of any further U.S.-Iranian violence, its leaders caught in a bind as Washington and Tehran are also the Baghdad government’s main allies and vie for influence there. In a message delivered through a representative at Friday prayers in the holy city of Kerbala, Sistani said no foreign powers should

be allowed to decide Iraq’s fate.

“The latest dangerous aggressive acts, which are repeated violations of Iraqi sovereignty, are a part of the deteriorating situation” in the region, Sistani said. Sistani, who wields huge influence over public opinion in Iraq, only weighs in on politics during times of crisis and is seen as a voice of moderation.

“The people have suffered enough from wars...Iraq must govern itself and there must be no role for outsiders in its decision-making,” Sistani said.

Iraq has suffered decades of war, sanctions and sectarian conflict, including two U.S.-led invasions and the rise and fall of Sunni militant groups al Qaeda and Islamic State.

The Washington Post said Mahdi had asked U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a phone call to devise a mechanism for the withdrawal of the

5,000 U.S. troops from Iraq following a parliamentary decision last week. The State Department did not return a request for comment. At Friday prayers in Tehran, an Iranian cleric said U.S. interests across the world were now exposed to threat. “From now on, having too many bases, especially in this region, will not act as an advantage for them,” Mohammad Javad Haj Aliakbari, a midranking cleric, told worshippers.

CALLS TO LEAVE: Since Soleimani’s killing, Tehran has stepped up its calls for U.S. forces to leave Iraq, which like Iran is a mainly Shi’ite Muslim nation. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said the retaliatory strikes were not enough and that ending the U.S. military presence in the region was its main goal.

The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted on

Thursday to terminate Trump’s powers to use U.S. armed forces against Iran without Congress’ consent. The measure now goes to the Senate, which is controlled by Trump’s Republican Party, where it faces an uphill battle.

A White House spokesman called the measure “ridiculous”.

Trump said on Thursday Soleimani was killed because he had planned to blow up a U.S. embassy. “Soleimani was actively planning new attacks and he was looking very seriously at our embassies and not just the embassy in Baghdad, but we stopped him and we stopped him quickly and we stopped him cold,” Trump, who is seeking reelection this year, told a rally in Ohio.

Trump offered no hard evidence of what drove the decision to kill Soleimani, which critics have called a reckless action. Soleimani carved out a sphere of Iranian influence running through Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, challenging regional rival Saudi Arabia as well as the United States and Israel. In Iran, he was a national hero whose funeral drew crowds of mourners but the West saw him as a dangerous and ruthless enemy.

Complicating the fraught situation, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. officials said they believed a Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed in Iran on Wednesday killing all 176 people on board was brought down by Iranian forces by mistake hours after the missile attacks. Iran denies it downed the plane.

Fearing nuclear proliferation, Europe scrambles to calm Iran tensions BRUSSELS AGENCIES

Europe will look on Friday for ways to guide the United States and Iran away from open conflict, knowing that a miscalculation from either side could leave the bloc facing a war and a serious nuclear proliferation crisis at its doorstep.

In a rare emergency meeting, EU foreign ministers, to be joined by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, may avoid any tough diplomatic response for now after Washington and Tehran backed off from an outright conflagration following the U.S. killing of an Iranian general in Iraq and retaliatory missile strikes by Iran that avoided military casualties.

“Iran’s desire to prevent the crisis from escalating has bought us some time, it has the effect of cooling this down just a little,” a senior EU diplomat told Reuters. But French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned before the afternoon meeting that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in one to two years if the country fully breaks with a nuclear containment accord it reached with world powers in 2015.

“If they continue with unraveling the Vienna agreement, then yes, within a fairly short period of time, between one and two years, they could have access to a nuclear weapon, which is not an option,” Le

Drian said on RTL radio.

Iran has been gradually discarding the deal’s limitations on its enrichment of uranium for nuclear fuel since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the accord in 2018, demanding tougher curbs on Iran. Iran said its steps away from the deal are reversible if Washington returns to it and lifts crippling sanctions that have throttled much of Tehran’s lifeblood oil trade.

The simmering tensions have highlighted Europe’s struggles to influence either side and play a mediating role with European powers Britain, France and Germany desperately trying to pressure Iran to stick to the nuclear pact. They also want to convince Trump, who on Wednesday called on them to join him in withdrawing from the nuclear deal, that they are tough-minded allies who will not be deceived by Tehran. Late on Thursday, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell spoke by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “We need to coordinate and maximize the effect everybody has in trying to de-escalate what the Iranians do, but it’s the same for the Americans. What’s most worrying is a miscalculation,” said a French diplomatic source.

NUCLEAR VIOLATIONS: Iran’s decision on Monday to scrap all enrichment curbs has also left the European powers in an awkward position.

Iran has repeatedly denied its nuclear program has military rather than civilian ends. But it has already breached many of the deal’s restrictions meant to increase the amount of time Tehran would need to accumulate enough fissile material for an atomic bomb from two to three months to about a year.

The latest announcements could start reducing that time and the three European powers - who along with Russia and China have attempted to salvage the deal since Trump’s withdrawal - are keen to send a firm message that the breaches are unacceptable.

They have agreed to begin a dispute resolution process under the 2015 deal that could lead to renewed U.N. sanctions on Tehran, but have hesitated on the timing fearing Iran may react badly, given its current confrontation with Washington.

Despite its moves, Iran has said the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, can continue its on-site inspections at its atomic sites, leaving some wiggle room for diplomacy.

“Iran has not set any targets or deadlines when it comes to uranium enrichment targets, so that gives us time,” a second EU diplomat said. A third EU diplomat said the decision to launch the process had been made, but that Friday was unlikely.

“There is a concern that it could trigger an Iranian escalation,” said a European diplomat.

iraq asks us for mechanism on troop withdrawal WASHINGTON AGENCIES

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi asked U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to devise a mechanism for a withdrawal of American troops from the country, the prime minister’s office said on Friday according to a Washington Post report.

Mahdi made the request in a telephone call with Pompeo on Thursday, the Post said.

The move followed a vote by Iraq’s parliament to expel the 5,000 U.S. troops in the country after a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani last week. Iran retaliated Tuesday night with air strikes on two bases in Iraq that house U.S. troops. There were no casualties and both Iran and the United States have since moved to de-escalate tensions. The State Department did not immediately return a request for comment on the report. In the phone call, Mahdi asked Pompeo “to send representatives to Iraq to put in place a mechanism for implementing the parliament’s decision for the safe withdrawal of forces from Iraq,” the Post said. Mahdi also objected to U.S. forces entering Iraq and planes flying over Iraqi airspace, according to a statement cited by the Post.

us says any delegation to iraq would not discuss troop withdrawal WASHINGTON AGENCIES

Any delegation the United States would send to Iraq would not discuss the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, the U.S. State Department said on Friday, saying the force presence there was “appropriate.” “There does, however, need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just regarding security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership,” department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

Australia urges quarter of a million to flee as winds fan huge bushfires SYDNEY AGENCIES

Australia urged nearly a quarter of a million people to evacuate their homes on Friday and prepared military backup as authorities said the next few hours could

be “very, very challenging” even as rain poured down in some parts.

Defense personnel stood ready to move to bushfire grounds if conditions became extreme, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters, as soaring temperatures and erratic winds create danger-

ous conditions. “Even with rain in Melbourne, even with forecast better conditions next week, there is a long way to go in what has been an unprecedented fire event...and, of course, we know that we have many weeks of the fire season to run,” Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, told a televised briefing.

“The next few hours are going to be very, very challenging.” While the winds are expected to move through by Saturday morning, Andrews urged residents to stay on high alert and leave the community “if you are told to”. Authorities sent emergency texts to 240,000 people in Victoria, telling them to leave. People in high-risk regions in New South Wales and South Australia were also urged to think about leaving, but officials did not say how many. Since October, 27 people have been killed and thousands subjected to repeat evacuations as huge and unpredictable fires scorched more than 10.3 million hectares (25.5 million acres) of land, an area roughly the size of South Korea.

In the coastal town of Eden in New South Wales, where the alert status was upgraded to ‘watch and act’ on Friday

evening, smoke filled the horizon as winds blew smoke and ash.

Shereen and Kim Green, who live on a farm with three houses and 50 cattle just outside Eden, were racing to fill two 1,000-litre tanks of water. “This is to put out the spot fires and we’ll be staying up

all night to defend our property,” said Shereen, as the wind shook her utility vehicle. “We’re taking the opportunity while we can.” Sitting under the town’s watchtower, another resident Robyn Malcolm said: “If it all goes wrong, we’ll dash down to the wharf and get on a tugboat.”

Climate Change protests stretCh to london as australia bushfires rage SYDNEY/LONDON: Thousands of Australians took to the streets on Friday to protest against government inaction on climate change, as bushfires ravaged tens of thousands of square miles of bushland after months of destruction and at least 27 deaths. Anger spread to Britain, where scores of people gathered in the Strand in central London to denounce Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, branded by one placard as a “fossil fool”. The bushfire crisis has added pressure on Morrison’s conservative government to do more to combat climate change after Australia weakened its commitment to the U.N. Paris climate accord last year.

Friday’s demonstrations came as authorities urged nearly a quarter of a million people to flee their homes and prepared military backup as soaring temperatures and erratic winds fanned bushfires across the east coast. Major roads in Sydney were blocked as protesters chanted “ScoMo has got to go”, referring to Morrison, while placard read ‘Save us from hell’. There were similar protests in Canberra, the capital, and Melbourne, where air quality turned so noxious this month that the two cities featured among places with the most polluted air on earth. AGENCIES

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

08 COMMENT The winds of change Moving towards a new normal

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he opposition has lost steam and has decided to put the issue of civilian supremacy on the back burner for the present. The U-turn by the two major opposition parties has led to sometime open and sometime symbolic intraparty protests. The differences in the case of the PML-N are more pronounced than in that of the PPP. It is being maintained by those supporting realpolitik that Nawaz Sharif’s hardline was out of sync with the ground realities as it required sacrifices for which the party workers were not ready.

While parliamentary leadership of both the PML-N and PPP decided to vote for the Army Act Amendment Bill, a handful of hardliners from both parties absented themselves during voting in the Senate. With the JUI-F and JI legislators boycotting the session, the grand opposition alliance formed soon after the 2018 elections is dead as a dodo.

The wizard’s wand is now guiding the opposition and the PTI to a new normal. After getting the Army Act Amendment Bill passed to legitimize the extension given to the COAS, attempts are afoot to bring the treasury benches and the opposition to work together to jointly legislate on other issues seen crucial by those who matter. These include legislation for the appointment of the Chief election Commissioner and members of the election Commission and formulation of a new NAB law. To create an environment conducive to joint legislation, the government has been greenlighted to bring back the nine Ordinances to Parliament for passage as laws through parliamentary process.

The government and opposition are scheduled to take up the issue of NAB laws next week. Despite Imran Khan calling upon NAB to use harsher methods against political opponents, the way NAB has wielded its autocratic powers had elicited strong criticism from the business community, bureaucracy and politicians.

Recently a Supreme Court judge questioned NAB’s policy of arresting first and investigating later and the CII declared some of NAB’s provisions against Sharia.

Seeing that decisions on the issue were being made elsewhere, a frustrated PM has already stopped his sickeningly repetitive mantra of ‘No NRO to anyone’. It is time the opposition and the government agreed on a more judicious NAB law.

Hunarmand Jawan programme Must avoid pitfalls of the past

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RIMe Minister Imran Khan’s launch of the hunarmand Jawan programme is aimed at a very sensitive audience: young people. The programme will put Rs 30 billion over the next four years into vocational training involving 170,000 young people in the first year. That is commendable, and seems designed to lock in support among a group that will probably be voting for the next half-century. After all, the PTI did come to power as the party of youth, and there was a loud claim that party chief Imran Khan provided an attractive alternative to the young voter.

Politics aside, the burgeoning population includes a large number of new entrants into the job market.

Unfortunately, too many young people, even those fortunate enough to have attended school, are entering the job market without the skills necessary for success.

Also important, and addressed by the new programme, has been the question of starting a business as opposed to getting a job, as well as mainstreaming madrassahs. even more than getting a job, starting a business demands vocational skills. however, there are some dangers. First, it should be remembered that there have been such programmes ever since the Ayub era. All such programmes have collapsed.

This programme will have to avoid the pitfalls behind this, and will have to establish some permanency somehow. Another problem is that a large sum of money is involved, so it is likely that unsavoury characters will try to make some of the funds flow their way. Most important will be to avoid turning the programme into some form of reward to the party faithful, which has been how youth programmes have degenerated in the past.

Another source of resistance is likely to the religious parties which have always put themselves forward as defenders of the rights of madrassahs. Madrassahs are key to the programme, with 70 targeted to be given smart classrooms, and this might prove the path through which opponents might try to raise resistance This will be despite the fact that this mainstreaming of madrassahs will put to rest a controversy that has lasted for decades now, over how madrassah students are to be made useful members of society.

Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami

Arif Nizami Editor Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad

Umar Aziz

Asher John

Joint Editor

Executive Editor

Deputy Editor

Lahore – Ph: 042-36300938, 042-36375965

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Foundational basics of Pak nuclear programme Bhutto played a crucial role as an Ayub minister dr rajkumar singh

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S in other cases, the Pakistani nuclear programme is a result of gradually changing circumstances, global, regional, and national. For example, its nuclear policy may be traced back to the mid-1950s and a focused historical narrative shows to assess how that policy evolved. It shows how Pakistan gradually moved from a civilian to a civil-military nuclear programme and ultimately a de facto nuclear weapon state.

The first began in 1954 when Pakistan conceived of a nuclear programme and ended in 1971.

Its programme was inspired by “Atoms for Peace” programme proposal which American President Dwight eisenhower announced in his deliberation to the General Assembly on December 8, 1953. The second phase began in December 1971 with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s accession to the presidency. This was the most decisive period as Pakistan shifted its civil nuclear energy programme to military-oriented missions.

The nuclear weapon programme of a sovereign nation is not static but dynamic and determined by the larger forces and interests at work both within the region and outside. Further regional security cannot be considered in isolation from global or extra-regional conditions. In contrast to India, Pakistan’s nuclear programme is driven mainly by its threat perception and security concerns with respect to India. It sees its potential nuclear forces as a deterrent to India’s conventional military advantages and strategic ambitions. The South Asian nuclear security complex involves several security dilemmas, including Pakistan/India, India/China, and Russia /USA. Pakistan’s developing concept from ‘Atoms for Peace’ to detonation in May 1998 is not driven by any single theory but a cluster of factors that include-military, security, political prestige and influence, economic gains and domestic pressures and compulsions.

Pakistan had emerged as an independent country in August 1947 but did not embark on a nuclear programme immediately. The first step in this direction was taken in 1953 with the setting up of an Atomic energy Council (AeC) under the chairmanship of Dr Nazir Ahmed whose task in-

cluded: (i) survey of radioactive minerals, (ii) working out a plan for the establishment of an atomic energy institute, and (iii) making recommendations on all matters connected with using atomic energy. Being inspired by the US President’s call for “Atoms for Peace” in December 1953, Pakistan’s nuclear programme was conceived in October 1954 and its Industry Minister announced a plan to set up a national atomic research unit as part of a new body for scientific and industrial research. A twelve-member Atomic energy Committee headed by Dr. Nazir was formed on whose recommendation, an Atomic energy Council was set up in March 1956 consisting of a governing body and an Atomic energy Commission (PAeC). It was made responsible for implementing the government’s goals for the Council. The first attempt to construct a nuclear research reactor and to establish a number of nuclear research centres and facilities for atomic Research and Development in medicine and agriculture was made in 1958, it however, could not produce substantive results as sufficient funds were not allocated for this plan.

1960 proved significant three reasons. First, the nuclear programme acquired a new patron, Mineral and Natural Resources the Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Second, Dr Ishrat h. Usmani was appointed PAeC Chairman and also made responsible for setting in motion many of the critical programmes and institutions that later gave Pakistan nuclear weapons. Usmani started the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology, the Pakistan Institute of Science and Technology and the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant. his achievements include the training programme under which brilliant young Pakistanis were selected and sent for training abroad. Between 1960 and 1967. Some 600 were selected, of whom 106 eventually returned with doctorates. And third, also in 1960, the USA gave Pakistan a $350,000 grant to help prepare Pakistan for its first research reactor which the USA agreed to supply two years later.

Three years later in 1963 Bhutto became the Foreign Minister and carried his interest in nuclear capabilities into office with him. In fact he was the chief architect of Pakistan’s nuclear policy and programme. Under him, Islamabad’s nuclear thinking underwent a significant change. earlier, when the PAeC was established he was

confident it would vigorously pursue its objective of paving the way for Pakistan to join the nuclear club. In his calculations: (i) A bomb would be a status symbol not only for Pakistan but the entire Islamic world; (ii) it would fetch aid and oil supply from the sympathetic Muslim states; and (iii) would give Pakistan enough leverage to put India into the defensive.

Bhutto’s vision of nuclear weapons represented a trump card in his foreign policy. In his view, Pakistan would become the first Muslim country with the bomb. Among the rich and security-anxious Arab States with whom he planned to share the secrets, success would enhance Pakistan’s stature and importance incalculably. There is also evidence that heavy funds were injected by the Libyans to promote his plan which, if realized, would tip the balance of power in the Middle east.

On the other hand, after 1960, the Ayub Government also put some emphasis on the development of nuclear energy in Pakistan. In the second national five-year plan (1960-1965), Rs. 46.5 million was allocated to the nuclear sector to be used for the training of nuclear scientists, exploration of radioactive minerals, establishment of different types of nuclear research reactors and a number of medical and agricultural centres using isotopes technique. Between 1960 and 1968, the Pakistani Government in fact spent Rs. 324 million for the development of nuclear technology in addition to Rs. 400 million for the construction of Karachi Nuclear Power Project (KANUPP).

Around the mid-1960s Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme went a step further and a clear policy shift appeared in government circles.

Citing Indian advances in nuclear fuel processing and the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the Pakistan Foreign Office and Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto began lobbying for a nuclear weapons option. Further at the close of 1960s (1969) the United Kingdom Atomic energy Agency agreed to supply a downscaled version of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, in operation at Windscale in Britain, to Pakistan. On 6 March 1970 the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force with the ratification of the USA, USSR and the Great Britain but Islamabad refused to sign the instruments of ratification. It showed basic shifts in Pakistan’s nuclear policy.

Dr Rajkumar Singh is head of the Department of Political Science, BNMU, Saharsa, Bihar, India. He can be reached at rajkumarsinghpg@gmail.com

Industrial Hemp a great opportunity for farmers Agri planners in Pakistan oblivious to the great opportunity Younus sandeela

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he history of Pakistan agriculture is filled with missed opportunities. Be it the case of exploiting the coastline to produce exotics like tiger shrimps or putting Pakistan’s fruits and vegetables on the shelves in the high-end markets, Pakistan has missed one opportunity after the other. Our agriculture policy is reactive and subsidy centric.

We have consistently failed to connect our agriculture with business. As a result, we have not seen any innovation in the agriculture sector which, in-spite of huge potential, continues to remain rudimentary and backward.

Industrial hemp or Cannabis Sativa could be the next big opportunity which, if handled tactfully, could change the landscape of Pakistan agriculture and play a significant role in improving economics at the grass root level. however, to be able to benefit from the opportunity it would be critical to understand that Industrial hemp, though strain of the same genus, is not same plant that is the source of psychoactive drug marijuana.

Cannabis Sativa or Industrial hemp is, in fact, one of the most misunderstood plants ever.

One of the oldest crops cultivated by humans, the history of industrial hemp dates back thousands of years when humans cultivated this plant for fibre as well as for its magical Cannabidiol or CBD oil. even today, CBD oil is recognized for its medicinal value. Like many countries of the world, cultivation of industrial hemp along with all strains of the cannabis family is banned in Pakistan and special approval is needed from the Anti Narcotics Department to grow the plant for research or medicinal purposes. however, many countries of the world have realized that a blanket ban on all strains of cannabis which was initiated

Karachi – Ph: 021-35381208-9

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by the western countries who were worried about the increasing usage of marijuana as a recreational drug in their societies was not a wise decision.

Banning all strains of cannabis to control marijuana production which came from only one strain with a high level of Tetrahydrocannabinol (ThC) was like banning all cars on the roads because some cars carried drugs in them.

Industrial hemp contains only 0.3 percent of Tetrahydrocannabinol. It is scientifically proven that such a small quantity has no psychoactive effect on the user. As against this the strain used to make recreational drugs contains around 5 percent of ThC. Additionally, the higher level of cannabidiol in industrial hemp works to actually decrease or even eliminate the psychoactive effects of ThC. Industrial hemp has numerous commercial uses. It is fast regaining its reputation as a reliable source of fibre for cloth making. According to some research it was one of the first plants to be spun into usable fibre 10,000 years ago. Its leaves and flowers are used to extract the valuable cannabidiol oil through the distillation process. Its stem can be used to make hempcrete, an environmentally friendly building material that was effectively used for construction, prior to the plant becoming the victim of mistaken identity. Mixing hemp’s woody core with lime and water can produce natural concrete with high insulating quality– it can retain thermal mass and weighs about one-eighth the regular concrete. hemp seed is a source of a valuable hemp-seed oil which is also highly valued for its taste, nutritional value and health benefits. The hemp plant is also recognized as the most efficient source for producing paper.

Pakistan’s agro-climatic conditions support the production of industrial hemp. It practically grows wild in Islamabad and the rest of the northern areas. It’s extremely adaptive nature, and the acceptability of varied soil types makes it a potentially big crop in almost all regions of

Islamabad – Ph: 051-2204545

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Web: www.pakistantoday.com.pk

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Pakistan. Furthermore, hemp’s water requirements are far less than that of most of our regular crops. Lastly, demand for hemp-derived products is rapidly increasing in the West and other wellpaying markets which means huge export potential for products derived from the crop.

Planners in Pakistan government must make efforts to first clear the misunderstanding about it being the same as the marijuana-producing cannabis and then encourage its plantation after making the necessary amendments in the law. Simultaneous efforts would be required to channelize investment into processing of hemp derived products like CBD Oil, hemp-seed oil, hemp fibre and hempcrete.

With 70% of total world production, China leads in hemp cultivation whereas, with about quarter world production, France ranks second.

More than 30 countries representing all continents where regular agriculture takes place are currently producing industrial hemp. Many countries that currently do not produce hemp due to legal restrictions are also working towards finding ways to regularize production of industrial hemp.

Unless the planners dealing with the agriculture sector in Pakistan act swiftly and intelligently we may end up missing out yet another opportunity to lift our agriculture out of its current state of backwardness. Yes, there is risk that some may misuse the liberalization of hemp cultivation by mixing in the drug-producing cannabis strain and start producing the drugs. But then is it fair to completely eliminate a very useful crop just because we cannot control some criminals? Would we ban grape cultivation if we feared that some people may start using the fruit to produce wine?

It is about time our agri planners took stock of latest developments at the international stage and prepared for benefiting from the latest trends. At-least a debate must start on possibility of allowing commercial cultivation of industrial hemp in the country.

Younus Sandeela is a freelance columnist.

Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

COMMENT 09 Editor’s mail

Send your letters to: Letters to Editor, Pakistan Today, 4-Shaarey Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan.

E-mail: letters@pakistantoday.com.pk Letters should be addressed to Pakistan Today exclusively

Kerfuffle about SimlaAccord ‘Bilateralism’

National interests and the US-Iran crisis There are enough issues at home abdul rahman malik

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veR since the PTI came into power on the slogans of retrieving looted wealth from politicos and forwarding the accountability process and stabilizing the economy by structural and institutional reforms, it has succeeded in putting bigwigs behind bars but retrieving looted wealth is still a big ask.

Despite a year and a half in office, the government is still unclear about the goal of providing the nation with a clear roadmap to success. So far the government presents a dismal picture both on the legislative and economic fronts despite the IMF bailout package and overcoming the current account deficit and raising reserves through support from Saudi Arabia, China and UAe. Foreign policy needs to be crafted according to a strategic vision. Senior diplomats think it needs to hyperactive, given the geostrategic location of Pakistan.

At present, there is a trust deficit in USPakistan Relations though Pakistan has played a pivotal role in the Afghan peace process, resulting in the beginning of US-Taliban dialogue.

Pakistan has played its part by bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table, and it is now the USA’s turn to further the dialogue process and strike a peace deal.

The recent blunder of the government not to attend the Kuala Lumpur Summit will cost Pakistan heavily, especially in terms of winning support for the Kashmiris oppressed by the Modi regime. Despite India’s 160 days of Kashmir lockdown, the government has not been able to put pressure on it through effective diplomacy to ease the tensions and getting support against its altering of Kashmir’s special status and annexing it with India.

India even went one step further by passing the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment. The controversial Act was criticized heavily and thousands of people have taken to streets against it.

The spokespersons of the gvernment have sunk its very ship by making irresponsible and illogical statements on court judgments and in Parliament, especially for the opposition, creating hurdles in the legislative process.

They have struck the ship of Government in the quagmire of political crisis by their stubborn-ness to the opposition in not seeking help for legislation or for ending the economic crisis, especially the inflation that has made people fed up with the current Government.

People will be distancing their support if the situation worsens. The PTI’s current team is a group of incompetent individuals who only repeat the statements given by their cabinet members.

It is a pity that Imran Khan has been kept in limbo by cabinet members while the coalition may have cracks in coming days if this stubborn attitude continues to prevail. This practice will ultimately sabotage the Kashmir cause since India took the fullest advantage of disintegration in Pakistani power politics.

The heads of mainstream parties such as the PML(N) and the PPP were in jail until released

on bail on medical grounds. PML(N) leaders Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif are in London for the former’s treatment. Nawaz’s critical health may be just an excuse, as PTI leaders say, since they wanted to get rid of sentences and trials.

The Government stuck to denying any NRO had been given or leniency shown, though some analysts called it a secret deal.

The PTI Government seemed in trouble to bring an amendment in the Army Act through either an Act or an amendment in the Constitution. For amending the Constitution, it required a two-thirds majority which would have compelled the Government to approach the opposition for support, which so far it does not seem to be in the mood to do, since it calls them corrupt and looters.

The PPP may cooperate with the Government in the amendment of the Constitution, but not on the 18th Amendment that guarantees complete autonomy to the provinces as some ministries such as health, education, local Government and so on, have been devolved to the provinces after the passage of the 18th Amendment during the PPP regime.

Luckily, the Government succeeded in passing the act to amend the Army, The Navy and The Air Force Chiefs appointment, reappointment tenure or extension rules.

Since it was a national security issue, none of the members of Parliament from both government and opposition benches objected to the Bill or introduced amendments as Defence Minister Pervez Khattak had requested the members not to make the issue controversial.

The bill was approved by the Defence standing committee first and later it was passed by the parliamentarians unanimously. The Government was able to adopt the bill and the opposition with heavy heart supported the bill for national security given the existing internal and external threats especially the standoff with India.

The bill after getting passed from Upper house was enacted as law and could not be challengeable in the court. The opposition support might have given relief to the Government since it was under heavy pressure to amend the Army Act within six months timeframe given by outgoing Chief justice Asif Saeed Khosa.

All the Opposition parties supported the Bill except the JUI(F) and the Jamaat Islami, since it was very important for national security in existing circumstances. COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa has played a key role in eradicating terrorism and for Afghan peace, as well as security in the region.

All the parties wanted him to continue his mission against anti-state elements and fulfil the task of maintaining peace in the region, especially striking of the peace deal between the USA and the Taliban. The Opposition understood the sensitivity of the issue and cooperated beyond expectation, and hence, deserves all praise for displaying sensibility and maturity. Though the Government used derogatory language for the opposition parties and questioned the loyalty of the ailing Nawaz and Zardari for the national cause, they expressed a united voice and cooperated with the Government.

Likewise, the Government should be polite

to the opposition and engage them to address the economic woes Pakistan faces. everyone believes that personal grudges are secondary but homeland security and economic prosperity are primary factors to be addressed, and a joint platform be formed to take Pakistan out of the economic quagmire, control rising inflation and commodity prices, especially daily use items. extending a hand for the sake of the country will not make the government stand down.

All that is needed is to set ego aside. Opposition support must be sought on the amendment of the NAB ordinance.

If the government goes harder, it will not be able to legislate on key issues. Pakistan cannot afford either derailment of democracy or early elections, given the economic and strategic factors, especially the US-Iran standoff over the assassination of Gen Qassem Suleimani.

Indian atrocities in Kashmir have no bounds and the prolonged lockdown has brought the valley to a standstill. The Kashmir cause has been affected owing to the attitude of government to the opposition that has weakened the united voice for the Kashmir cause.

The USA approaching Pakistan for Middle east crisis has increased the geostrategic importance of Pakistan since Pakistan enjoys good relations with Iran and the USA. US Secretary of State Mark Pompeo’s call to General Bajwa confirms that the USA wants Pakistan to play a role.

Despite the US-Iran escalation, defense and security analysts have rejected a war since what Iran did to take revenge, to satisfy the Iranian people demanding revenge. Pakistan needs to be very careful not be the part of conflict since it has already paid a heavy price by supporting the USA during the Afghan war by providing airbases under the Musharraf regime. The conditions in the Middle east are very critical since the Iraqi Parliament has passed a resolution asking the US to leave Iraq as the strike was against the sovereignty of Iraq and a grave violation of international law.

US President Donald Trump is being heavily criticized by his party leaders since both Republicans and Democrats termed the strike a big mistake as the evidence was not provided that General Suleimani was an imminent threat to the USA. Trump made it clear that despite missile strikes by Iran on two military bases there were no causalities and hinted that the USA would not engage in war with Iran. On the contrary, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini has made it clear that Iran would not halt strikes until US forces left Iraq and anti-Iran sanctions were lifted.

Pakistan should remain away from the conflict and continue efforts for peace, and should not provide its bases to be used against Iran since it has already experienced a tragic APS attack and cannot afford to have more such.

The Government must engage security, defence and foreign policy experts, and senior diplomats from both Government and Opposition Parties to devise a national policy for terms of engagement with the USA so that Pakistan may not face any diplomatic issues, as in the past that affected our ties with neighbouring country Afghanistan.

BOTh India and Pakistan say they won at the UNSC. India’s contention is that under article 1 (ii) of the Simla Accord ‘the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations’. But this clause also stipulates that ‘pending the final settlement of any of the problems between the two countries, neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation’. Was revocation of the Special Status of Kashmir not a bid to ‘unilaterally alter the situation’?

What about the words ‘pending the final settlement’, signifying Kashmir dispute was still unsettled? What about article 1 (i) which states that ‘the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations shall govern the relations between the two countries’? It appears that India regards the LoC as International Boundary, in accordance with an unsubstantiated ‘secret understanding’ (PN Dhar, ‘Kashmir: The Simla Solution’, The Times of India April 4, 1995). Dhar said, ‘Bhutto agreed not only to change the ceasefire line into a line of control … but also agreed that the line would be gradually endowed with the characteristics of an international border’.

I think Avtar Singh Bhasin’s book, based on Nehru Papers, India Pakistan: Neighbours at Odds should set all controversies about Simla Accord at rest. Bhasin clarifies (page 256), ‘It may also be added in parentheses that soon after PN Dhār’s article was published in the Times of India, Pakistan’s Foreign Office Spokesman rejected any suggestion that there was any secret understanding at Simla.’ (Bhasin Document No. 1348 in India-Pakistan Relations 1947-2007) ‘At the end, Bhutto the “dramatist” carried the day at Simla. having said that, India once again faltered to ask the UN to withdraw its team from Kashmir, or to withdraw its (India’s) own recognition to it and its privileges (Document No. 0712 in Bhasin’s India-Pakistan Relations 1947-207). Bhasin says (p.257-259), ‘The Pakistan Radio broadcasts and… commentators however took special pains to highlight …the fact: (i) that India has accepted Kashmir to be a disputed territory and Pakistan a party to the dispute; (ii) that the UNSC resolutions had not been nullified; (iii) Kashmir remained the core issue between the two countries and that there could not be permanent peace without a just solution based on the principle of self-determination for the people of Kashmir. And Pakistan was right in its assessment. It lost the war won the peace. At the end India was left askance at its own wisdom.

AJ MALIk Rawalpindi

Child labour in Pakistan ChILD labour is the employment of children for work.

According to the ILO, Child Labour is defined as work that has the potential to deprive children of their childhood, their dignity and is also harmful for their physical, moral and mental development. It also interferes with their education (either by not allowing them to attend school, leaving school prematurely, or forcing them to juggle school attendance with heavy work).

It is a great problem in Pakistan. The human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that in the 1990s, 11 million children were working in the country, half of whom were under age ten. A large section of these children is employed through an informal economy in streets, in private structures or in their homes. This also deprives them of any form of safety and recognition. Denying children their fundamental right to be educated between the ages of five to sixteen exposes them to health hazards, hampers their development and puts them at risk to other forms of violence, which may be physical, psychological and sexual. Moreover, children in the labour environment are highly vulnerable to exploitation, including commercial and sexual, as well as trafficking.

AREEBA MUNEER karachi

The mobile phone addiction WITh due respect, I would like to draw the attention of the concerned authority to the issue of rising addiction of mobile phones. Latest research indicates that the use of the internet and mobile phones becomes an obsession with the students. It may be considered one of the biggest non-drug addictions of the century.

The youth are most affected by this. Although mobile phones have become a necessity today, young people must be aware of how to effectively use them. Workshops can be conducted to raise awareness among the people about the issue. I expect that through your newspaper this issue would be looked upon as soon as possible.

HAMMAD LoDHI karachi

Research in Pakistan ReSeARCh in Pakistan’s educational sector has always been a hard nut to crack. Most of the universities lack research facilities. Students are provided with some PPT files and notes to get them through the exam. Consequently, graduates possess no critical thinking and innovation. Furthermore, the majority of engineering graduates are only able to solve the problems included in their notes. The highest-ranked Pakistani university in the list published by QS World University Rankings 2019 occupies the 397th spot. There endures the vacuum between industry and university’s research facility, as in the case of any equipment design dilemma where foreign graduates are called in for help. In the present phase of socio-economic turmoil in Pakistan, the performance of industries is quite crucial.

ENgR. SYED FAIzAN SHAH Lahore

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

10 FOREIGN NEWS

meghan returns to Canada as british royals seek to solve harry rift LONDON

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AGENCIES

EGHAN, the wife of Prince Harry, has gone back to Canada to be with their son after the couple provoked a rift with Britain’s royal family by unexpectedly announcing they would be stepping back from their roles to spend more time in North America.

Queen Elizabeth and other senior British royals were trying to calm the crisis by thrashing out a plan for Harry and Meghan after the couple blindsided the family by going public with their announcement without consultation. The couple spent six weeks in Canada at the end of last year before returning to Britain and their first official engagement of 2020 was to visit Canada House to say thank you for what they said had been an “unbelievable” welcome.

Their baby son, Archie, remained in Canada as Harry and Meghan returned

to announce that they would step back from royal duties and build a more “progressive” role for themselves.

Meghan has now returned to Canada to be with her son, a spokeswoman said. The couple - formally the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - said they had been reflecting for months before making the decision, which would see them divide their time between Britain and North America to allow them and Archie the space they needed.

They also said they intended to become financially independent.

The couple, who spoke of their struggles dealing with the intense media attention in a TV interview last October, revealed their decision to step back from royal duties on Instagram, leaving senior royals hurt and disappointed.

Discussions over the future had only been at a preliminary stage and neither the queen nor Prince Charles - Harry’s father and heir to the throne - were consulted on the release of their statement or its contents, a royal source said. As

prinCe harry's deCision is matter for royal household: british pm’s spokesman LONDON: The decision by Prince Harry and his wife Meghan to step back from their senior roles is a matter for the royal household, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday. Harry and Meghan made their announcement late on Wednesday, taking Queen Elizabeth, Harry’s grandmother, and Prince Charles, Harry’s father, by surprise. AGENCIES

madame tussauds removes waxworks of harry and meghan from royal family display LONDON: Madame Tussauds waxwork museum has removed the figures of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan from its British royal family display, in response to the couple’s announcement that they will be stepping back from royal duties. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced on Wednesday that they intend to divide their time between North America and the UK to carve out a “progressive new role” and step back from their senior positions. Senior members of the royal family were disappointed by the move, a royal source said. Madame Tussauds, which contains more than 250 wax models of celebrities, said the two figures will go in a separate section, away from that which includes Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and Prince William and his wife Kate. “Alongside the rest of the world, we are reacting to the surprising news that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be stepping back as senior Royals,” said general manager Steve Davies. AGENCIES

the crisis engulfed the Windsors, aides who work for the queen, Charles, and Harry’s elder brother William were trying to find a solution. The royal source said it was hoped a successful outcome would take “days not weeks”.

‘CRISIS TALKS’: “Queen fights to save monarchy,” the Daily Mirror said on its front page while the Sun tabloid spoke of “Crisis talks after couple defied Queen”. While other members of the royal family have had paying jobs, it was not immediately clear how Harry, 35 and sixth in line to the throne, and Meghan, 38, could become what royal biographers said was effectively “half-

royal” - and who would pay for their transatlantic lifestyles.

At the moment, nearly all of their income is provided by Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall estate, although the cost of their security - estimated by newspapers to be hundreds of thousands of pounds a year - is currently met by the government. The Times newspaper said Charles might cut off their funding if they moved away from royal duties altogether, although public relations experts said they could use their global fame to make large sums through public speaking, endorsements or their own TV production company.

Spain's Socialists carve out coalition cabinet focused on economy MADRID AGENCIES

Spain’s first coalition government since the return to democracy began to take shape on Friday, designed to pacify markets nervous over a slowing economy, global trade tensions and the Socialists’ reliance on the far left.

After a cliffhanger vote on Tuesday that saw Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez chosen to form a new government, a steady trickle of announcements have sketched out one of Spain’s largest cabinets in recent decades. It is tasked with forging consensus among a shaky patchwork of alliances to pass laws. The new government’s emphasis will be on the economy, Socialist sources told Reuters, as forecasts suggest growth will slow from 2.1% in 2019 to 1.8% this year.

Sanchez’s government will include four deputy prime ministers - a first in modern Spanish history three of whom are women. Nadia Calvino, in charge of the economy ministry since 2018 and last year floated as a candidate to replace Christine Lagarde in running the International Monetary Fund, will coordinate economic affairs and digital transformation.

Teresa Ribera will focus on the environment and rural depopulation, while Carmen Calvo will be responsible for parliamentary relations and recognizing victims of the civil war and Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. The fourth deputy prime minister will be

Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Unidas Podemos, who will handle social rights and sustainable development.

The far-left party will also take four ministries, ranging from higher education to consumer affairs.

ECONOMY DOMINATES: A senior Podemos official told Reuters the party was caught off guard by the addition of a fourth deputy prime minister, which he saw as a bid by the Socialists to limit Iglesias’ influence. “We want to make it clear that the area of economics will be key in this legislature,” a source close

to Sanchez told Reuters. “And that the Socialists hold the reins of the economy.”

The government’s desire to prioritize the economy colored several of its choices. Arancha Gonzalez Laya, currently assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and a former World Trade Organization official, will replace Josep Borrell as foreign minister. Jose Luis Escriva, head of Spain’s budget watchdog and former chief economist at Spanish bank BBVA, will lead the ministry responsible for social security - charged with carrying out the long-awaited pension reform - as well as migration.

In an analysis, JP Morgan bank said it saw “no significant systemic risk implications” in the blend of ministers. “We don’t expect a left-wing government to behave anything like we saw in Italy, where two different breeds of populism, both with euro-sceptic components, drove policy making to extremes, severely undermining growth and fuelling major financial markets tensions,” it said.

Ratings agency Fitch, however, suggested the political uncertainty behind four elections in as many years and which forced the Socialists to court Catalan separatists in their bid to form government would remain the Achilles heel.

“The government only narrowly secured parliamentary backing, and the Catalan regional government’s policy of pursuing independence remains a potential source of political volatility,” it said in a note.

macron defies french unions over retirement age in pension reform PARIS AGENCIES

France’s government defied trade unions on Friday by including a contested clause on raising the retirement age by two years in its draft legislation, amid signs that weeks of street protests and strikes may be losing momentum. President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed reform to streamline France’s byzantine pension schemes is the biggest overhaul of the system since World War Two and is central to his ambition to make the labor force more flexible and competitive globally. But it has infuriated trade unions who argue the reform will erode hard-earned benefits and leave pensioners worse off. The bill, which will be sent to France’s pension administrators on Friday for their consideration, says the retirement age for a full pension will be progressively raised to reach 64 “for the 1965 generation who will retire from 2027”. Under the proposal, the legal retirement age will remain 62 but workers who leave at that point will not receive their maximum pension. “We could not have a text that is silent on the age (for a balanced pension budget),” Laurent Pietraszewski, secretary of state for pensions, told Reuters. “It is at the heart of the reform.” DEADLOCK: If Macron emerges the winner from the weeks-long showdown, he will have gone further than any other French postwar leader in shaking up the pension system. However, negotiations continue on Friday between the unions and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. It is still possible the plans will be watered down as the government seeks to break the deadlock. Hard-left unions are calling for the government to abandon the bill. The reform-minded CFDT union, France’s largest, is open to the planned universal “points” system, but says an increase of the retirement age “crosses a red line”. Unions brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets in cities across France on Thursday but turnout was down on past protests and their momentum is faltering. Participation in strikes now in their 37th day has waned and public support fallen, according to opinion polls. Philippe has agreed to seek a way of balancing the pension budget other than by raising the retirement age while the bill is being scrutinized in parliament. His government has promised to include any alternative solutions as amendments. But that has so far been rejected by the unions.

Show Hong Kong value of democracy, Taiwan’s president says before vote TAIPEI/KAOHSIUNG AGENCIES

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen urged young voters on Friday to turn out and show protest-wracked Hong Kong the meaning of democracy on the eve of elections held in the shadow of anti-government protests in the Chinese-run city across the sea.

Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary polls on Saturday against the backdrop of both Hong Kong’s unrest and Chna’s new push to get the democratic island to accept its rule. The China issue is front and center in the campaign, especially after President Xi Jinping warned last year Beijing could attack Taiwan, though adding he would prefer a peaceful “one country, two systems” formula.

The former British colony of Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under such a formula aimed at ensuring a high degree of autonomy.

But that model has never been popular in Taiwan and is even less so now after the protests in Hong Kong, largely trig-

gered by fears that Beijing is slowly eroding freedoms. Beijing denies that.

Speaking at her final, packed rally in Taipei, Tsai urged people to look across the Taiwan Strait to Hong Kong.

“The young people of Hong Kong are using their lives and blood and tears to show us that ‘one country, two systems’ is not feasible,” she said. “Tomorrow it’s the turn of our young people in Taiwan to show them that the values of democracy and freedom will overcome all difficulties.”

China claims Taiwan as its sacred territory, to be taken by force if needed. Taiwan says it is an independent country, called the Republic of China, its official name.

Tsai and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are being challenged by Han Kuo-yu of the main opposition Kuomintang party. He favours close ties with Beijing and says this is the only way to ensure Taiwan’s security and prosperity.

OPPOSITION SAYS TAIWAN ISOLATED: Speaking at his own mass rally in the southern port of Kaohsiung, where he is mayor, Han criticised Tsai for doing little in the past four years apart from in-

creasing Taiwan’s international isolation and described ties with China as “freezing”. “They can’t produce any achievements,” Han told supporters, with banners by his side carrying a campaign slogan, “Taiwan safe, people get rich”.

He did not mention Hong Kong.

The United States, Taiwan’s top arms supplier and most important supporter even in the absence of formal diplomatic ties, will also be watching closely, having warned in the run-up to the vote against Chinese attempts to sway the election.

The de facto U.S. ambassador in Taiwan, Brent Christensen, is scheduled to meet Tsai on Sunday morning, according to Taiwan’s presidential office.

The Hong Kong protesters have widespread public sympathy in Taiwan, and both the DPP and Kuomintang have pledged to help any Hong Kong people who flee to the island. Both Tsai and Han have rejected “one country, two systems”.

The DPP has painted a vote for the Kuomintang as effectively a vote for the model, something Han has angrily denied.

Taiwan’s noisy, colourful elections

CMYK

are a marked contrast to China, where the Communist Party brooks no challenge to its rule and where ordinary people have no say in who governs them, something that can be a shock to Chinese visitors.

“I didn’t expect to see singers on stage.

For a while I felt like I was in a concert,”

said Yin Weiguo, a 27-year-old Chinese engineer on a business trip to Taiwan, who attended a Han rally in Taipei on Thursday.

“I just wanted to see what people did at a rally. There were so many people,” Yin told Reuters while visiting Taipei’s Chiang Kaishek Memorial Hall, a major tourist site.

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

BUSINESS 11

Centre, SInDh At loGGerheADS over ProPoSeD GAS PrICInG FormulA ISLAMABAD

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AHMAD AHMADANI

HE federal government and the Sindh government are at loggerheads over the proposal to include the price of imported LNG in the average weighted cost of gas (WACOG) for Sindh.

The differences between the two (centre and Sindh) emerged after a claim of Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Petroleum Nadeem Babar that Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had "agreed" to the inclusion of RLNG in the WACOG formula of local natural gas during the last meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI).

The Sindh CM, in a letter to the prime minister on January 8, had termed the claim as "very disturbing", saying it had created unrest amongst the people of Sindh as this news was

carried in the national press. CM Murad had also requested the PM to stop Nadeem Babar from any attempt to include RLNG into existing WACOG formula for tariff determination and to ensure supply of locally produced natural gas to consumers in Sindh as per demand and as per their constitutional right. He held that Sindh was producing more gas than what it was receiving as its share. "As per the constitution, Sindh has the first right to use the gas which it produces. Moreover, it is beyond common sense that Sindh should buy expensive gas when it has been producing cheaper gas," he added.

Meanwhile, the Petroleum Division, while responding to the Sindh CM on Friday, said that the federal government would wish to uphold the positive spirit of CCI meeting wherein it was mutually agreed to reach decisions on the distribution of gas to Sindh in a collaborative man-

ner. "It is therefore in the interest of Sindh and not just the federation, to arrive at a mutually agreed structure for supplies, distribution & pricing of natural gas in any form to ensure uninterrupted supplies to the country," said a Petroleum Division's rejoinder.

"During the CCI meeting on December 23, 2019, both the SAPM and the Sindh chief minister had agreed to categorise LNG as gas and the subsequent jurisdiction of OGRA to determine its price; they had also agreed to the SAPM's visit to Karachi, subject to CM Sindh's availability, to discuss the subject of WACOG, gas distribution and pricing through constructive discussions." The Petroleum Division clarified that it neither rejected the Sindh government's demand that 'gas needs of the province should be fulfilled first' nor was such a recommendation ever under consideration.

According to the rejoinder, gas

discovered in Sindh has always been allocated to the Sui Southern Gas Company under the present government's tenure.

"The reporting of SAPM's interpretation of Article-158 was also misconstrued during the CCI meeting. According to the SAPM, the citizens of Pakistan (not any particular province) have the first right of use given that citizens are the ultimate owners of this resource," the rejoinder read. "Any use beyond domestic consumers needs to be decided amicably between federation and provinces under Article-158."

The Petroleum Division also highlighted that Sindh has been producing approximately 2,243 Million Cubic Feet per Day (MMCFD). Out of the total, 1,200-1,300 MMCFD was being put in the SSGC system while approximately 700MMCFD was being provided directly to the power and fertiliser sectors in Sindh.

PPAF wins Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks Award Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund has added another feather to its cap by winning the prestigious Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks Award (GDIB) for the fourth consecutive year. GDIB awards are a mechanism to encourage and support progressive organizations that are aligned with GDIB standards and implement diversity and inclusion initiatives along with ensuring sustainable performance. GDIB was hosted by The Centre for Global Inclusion, USA, and the Diversity Hub. PPAF has been regularly recognized for its policies by Diversity Hub and this year the organization bagged awards in five categories; Best Practice in D&I Vision; Strategy & Business Case; Best Practice in D&I Structure and Implementation; Best Practice in Community, Government Relations; Award for Recruitment, Retention, Development, Advancement and Social Responsibility; and Best Practice for Products and Services Development. BUSINESS DESK

CORPORATE CORNER

K-electric faces financial crisis as receivables reach rs52.2bn ‘With huge amounts pending in the form of receivables from sindh govt, Ke is facing severe constraints in running its day-to-day operations’ KARACHI AFTAB CHANNA

K-Electric is going through a severe financial crisis as the Sindh government is yet to clear off the long-pending electricity dues of its various departments, Pakistan Today has learnt. According to sources, although a huge amount of Rs52.29 billion under the head of electricity bills is pending for the last couple of years, the provincial authorities seem reluctant to resolve the grave issue.

Neither Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah nor Sindh Energy Minister Imtiaz Shaikh had met with the K-Electric authorities to resolve the issue despite the fact that KE CEO Syed Moonis Alvi had forwarded various letters (dated 9th April 2019, 13th May 2019 and 1st October

2019) to the Sindh chief minister, asking him to expedite the payment process so that the power utility could ensure smooth functioning.

“As apprised in our earlier letters, K-Electric is facing severe cash flow issues due to the nonpayment of dues by the Sindh government. The company is working tirelessly to manage its routine operations along with the purchase and supply of power for Karachi and its adjoining areas,” Alvi stated in the letter. “With large amounts pending in the form of receivables from the Sindh government, KE is facing severe constraints in running its day-to-day operations and ensuring uninterrupted supply of power to the city.” The letter further stated, “KE’s receivables from different government departments have now increased to Rs19.2 billion, of which Rs4.5 billion have been reconciled. In addition, Rs33.09 billion was also receivable on account of Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KW&SB), of which Rs28.5 billion dues have been fully reconciled.

In its summary to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Alvi recalled, the Sindh government had agreed to devise a payment plan for the reconciled amount, which was also made part of SC’s order. However, he added, there have been notable delays in the payment against the men-

tioned reconciled amount while a payment plan was still awaited. “As a result, K-Electric’s borrowing has increased substantially and the situation is not sustainable for the company.

Moreover, the capacity of banks to finance KE has been exhausted, inadvertently affecting KE’s working capital and long-term expansion plan,” the CEO said in the letter.

According to Alvi, K-Electric has not been a defaulter of current payments to any of its fuel suppliers since 2012, despite the cash flow situation. “However, to be able to make further payments to our suppliers and ensure smooth operations, it is essential that the release of outstanding dues is expedited.” Upon contact, Sindh Energy Minister Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh told Pakistan Today that bills worth Rs6 billion have so far been reconciled and that they are currently under process at the finance department. “The Sindh government has nothing to do with the power bills of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB), District Municipal Corporation (DMCs) and Karachi Development Authority (KDA), as the provincial government gives single line budget to these organizations and they are responsible to clear their utility bills,” he maintained.

For the 6th time at the Youth Olympic Games, OMEGA is ready to fulfil its role as Official Timekeeper. Around 1,880 young athletes from 70 nations have arrived to compete in 81 winter events at Lausanne 2020, and the Swiss watchmaker will be there to time every second. PR

KARACHI: Fauji Fertilizer Company Limited (FFCL) Secretary Brig (r) Ashfaq Ahmed recently received the ‘Top 25 Companies Award’ from Prime Minister Imran Khan during a ceremony held at the Governor House. PR

‘Pakistan’s textile exports to hit $26bn-mark in next five years’ long-term textile policy liKely to be presented for approval next WeeK LAHORE HASSAN NAQVI

Textile exports would hit $26-billion mark in the next five years subject to strict implementation of the long-term textile policy.

The high figure was projected

by All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) Senior Vice Chairman Punjab Abdul Rahim Nasir in an exclusive chat with Profit on Friday. Nasir said that Pakistan's textile sector growth rate target has been set, starting from 10pc in FY20 and gradually growing to 13pc in the fifth year.

"This will help [government] achieve almost $26 billion worth of exports in the first phase (FY20-FY24)." Pakistan's textile exports during 2019 were recorded at $13.3 billion, comprising 8pc from cotton yarn, 16pc from cotton yarn, 17pc from bed wear, 6pc from towels, 5pc from made-up articles, 1pc from tents, canvas and tarpaulin, 22pc from knitted apparels, 20pc from woven apparels, 2pc from art, silk and synthetic textile and 3pc from other textile materials.

According to figures available with this scribe, 10pc growth in textile exports is expected this year. This would be approxi-

mately $14.5 billion. For the second phase (2025-30) of the policy, a growth rate of 15pc to 16pc would be ensured to achieve the target of $50 billion exports.

According to textile ministry sources, Adviser to PM on Commerce Abdul Razzak Dawood, after taking charge, had directed Taskforce on Textile Chairman Ahsan Bashir to develop a longterm textile policy for Pakistan.

The policy, according to sources, has now been prepared and would be sent for approval to Dawood in the coming week.

"Instead of exporting raw material, we will first process it in Pakistan and then export it in the form of made-up articles and garments as that would have a huge impact on our exports," Nasir said while revealing the mechanism to achieve the growth target.

1,000 GARMENT PLANTS: Nasir said that after the approval of the long-term textile policy, textile owners would set up 1,000 garment plants to convert raw materials into finished products (made-up and garments).

These plants would be established near major textile producing cities including Lahore, Sheikhupura, Faisalabad, Kasur, Multan, Sialkot, Rawalpindi,

Karachi and Peshawar. Agreeing with Nasir, APTMA's Group Leader Gohar Ijaz said that the association's members are in the process of setting up plants that would convert yarn and fabric into made ups and garments. "This will help increase our exports by $10 billion in the next four years." During 2011-2019, Pakistan's textile exports were $13.8 billion, which decreased to $13.3 billion in 2019.

Nasir said that textile industrialists are willing to invest $5 billion. "We demand the government to allow Long Term Finance Facility (LTFF) for building the infrastructure of garment plants, as the existing scheme only allows plants and machinery. "Cost of building infrastructure in garment

units is more than 50pc of the project cost." He further said that the govt should allow LTFF to indirect exports so as to provide domestically produced yarns and fabric to stitching plants.

THE HURDLES: The biggest hurdle in achieving these targets is getting energy at competitive rates. Nasir said that at present, the government would continue providing gas to the textile sector at the rate of $6.5/mmBTU till June-July 2020. "After coming to power, the PTI govt had promised that the textile sector will get electricity at a flat rate of 7.5 Cents/kWh, but we are hearing that they are planning to take it to 8.5 to 9 cents/kWh." He said the govt should continue providing

energy at a flat rate to the entire textile value chain for five years if it wants to achieve export targets. Talking to this scribe, APTMA's Executive Director Shahid Sattar said with the imposition of 17pc GST on the previously zero-rated textile sector, FBR is looking to collect Rs600 billion from the sector and giving a refund of approximately Rs480 billion on exports.

Sattar said at the time of withdrawal of zero-rating, the government’s rationale was that the domestic commerce does not pay tax and that GST was designed to bring the domestic commerce into the tax net. "The industry provided the government with data which proved beyond doubt that

out of all domestic production, 70pc was exported and only 30pc was sold in the domestic market," Sattar said, adding that it would burden the exports with additional cost of borrowing for GST and awaiting refund would render Pakistani products uncompetitive in the international markets.

However, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council member Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri thinks otherwise. He said, "The GST exemption is not taken back by the government and textile industrialists could adjust it against exports." Dr Suleri added that previously, in the name of exports, textile and ready-made garments were being distributed and sold domestically and were shown as exports, and they were claiming GST exemption on that.

"The imposition of 17pc GST is definitely a pinching thing but it will ensure that major exporters will avoid domestic market and will focus more on exports," he said. A senior official at FBR confirmed that after APTMA’s suggestion the govt agreed that a lower rate of GST (7.5pc) would be imposed initially and increased over time so that the market could adjust to the additional liquidity requirements.

“Despite this agreement, the govt went ahead and imposed 17pc GST which is the primary cause of the huge liquidity problems now,” Sattar said.

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

12 BUSINESS

Pm InAuGurAteS rS510m AzAkhel Dry Port In nowSherA no agreed target for exchange rate under ImF programme: SBP KARACHI MEIRYUM ALI

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Friday issued a series of tweets through its official Twitter handle, clarifying that the exchange rate is market determined, and there is no set target for the exchange rate under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme. In the tweets, the SBP explained the difference between two different economic concepts: the exchange rate, which is a reflection of the balance of payments of a county, and the forward exchange rate, which is determined by the spot exchange rate and differences in interest rates between countries. The SBP tweeted, “#Exchange rate is determined by market forces of demand and supply and is a reflection of existing BOP position. Forward exchange rates are determined by the existing spot rates and #Interest rate differentials of the relevant period i.e. time value of money.” The SBP then further tweeted: “Forward #exchange rates (ER) r not a forecast of future exchange rates. #IMF Report on #Pakistan includes ER assumptions which r not predictions. Under the IMF-supported program there is no agreed target level for exchange rate.

ER is market determined.” The tweets have come at a time when there seems to be confusion about the exchange rates discussed in the IMF Staff Report on Pakistan, published in July 2019. To further emphasize its point, the SBP also retweeted IMF Pakistan’s tweet from July 11 last year. “The published Staff Report on Pakistan includes exchange rate assumptions which are not predictions. Under the IMF-supported program there is no agreed target level for the exchange rate, which is market determined.” the IMF tweet reiterated. The IMF Staff Report from July 2019 had called for a “flexible, marketdetermined exchange rate to restore competitiveness, rebuild official reserves, and provide a buffer against external shocks.” In the first review of Pakistan’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) in December 2019, the IMF said, “Transition to a market-determined exchange rate has been orderly; inflation has started to stabilize, mitigating the impact on the most vulnerable groups of the population.”

RESERVES CROSS $11.5BN: Meanwhile, the foreign exchange reserves held by the SBP increased by $14.3 million on a weekly basis.

According to a statement issued by the central bank, the foreign currency reserves held by the SBP were recorded at $ 11,503.7 million on January 3, compared with $11,489.4 million as on December 27. The SBP cited no reason for the increase in reserves. The overall liquid foreign currency reserves held by the country, including net reserves held by banks other than the SBP, rose to $18,084.8 million from $18,081.4 million.

Net reserves held by banks, however, fell to $6,581.1 million, from $6,592 million.

‘govt Will sell and repurpose railWays’ land in order to pay for losses accumulated in previous regimes’ PESHAWAR

P

STAFF REPORT

RIME Minister Imran Khan on Friday inaugurated the Azakhel dry port in Nowshera district. The dry port has been completed at a cost of Rs510 million and is expected to boost trade and economic activities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Addressing the ceremony, Prime Minister Imran congratulated Railways Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed on the completion of the project. "Let me tell you why no government has ever invested money on railways ... it is because railways is the medium of travel for the poor, not the rich. Money was always poured into things and projects that will benefit the rich elite of the country," the prime minister said.

"Railways has been in loss for

years; it rakes up losses worth billions every year and the hard-earned tax money that people pay is used to pay for those losses. Our government is trying to turn railways into a profitable organisation so that the common man can benefit from it.

"We will sell and re-purpose all the land that railways has in order to pay for the previous losses that the previous governments had raked up.

"We are trying to make Pakistan a welfare state. For that, we are trying to come up with policies that are people friendly. In railways, we have started giving concessions on tickets to people above the age of 60.

"We are also developing stalls on railway platforms for women so that they are able to make money and provide for their families." He also gave the details of all the projects that the government has started under the Ehsas programme.

Earlier, Railways Minister Sheikh Rasheed took the floor and said, “The Rs510 million Azakhel dry port project will promote business and trade in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”

"I would like to suggest that we add the Peshawar-Jalalabad rail route to the ML-1 track. I assure you prime minister sahib if that happens all smuggling will end in the country."

Ahmad said the Peshawar-Jalalabad railway project would connect Pakistan with Afghanistan and Central Asian Republics and turn the province into a hub of trade, business and investment. "When it had started, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was solely based on a single railway track; other things were simple minor projects.

Today, railways have been left behind because of negligence and CPEC has moved forward," Rashid said. "I would also like to announce that railways will provide raises to its employees from the revenue it is generating," Rasheed said, adding that 100,000 jobs will open up the day the ML-1 railway track opens.

The minister hoped that the Pakistan Railways would become a

profitable organisation within four years. He said the federal government had planned mega projects to strengthen and increase railway connectivity in KP. He said the proposed railway track would pass through Loi Shalman area of Khyber tribal district, mountainous terrains and beautiful landscapes of KP and thus, promoting tourism.

He said the government had decided to open the Nowshera-Dargai railways section, which would help promote tourism in Malakand division, including Swat, Dir, Chitral and Buner districts.

Speaking before Prime Minister Imran and the minister for railways, Minister for Defence Pervez Khattak — who hails from Nowshera — pointed out some issues that the people of Azakhel have which the railway ministry and the prime minister's office could resolve.

"I am taking this opportunity to tell the railways minister and the prime minister the problems of the people of Nowshera and hope that Sheikh Rashid and the prime minister will announce some packages to solve these problems," Khattak said.

anti-russia elements active in conspiring against nsgp project ISLAMABAD ONLINE

The publication of a fake and fabricated media report against the North-South Gas Pipeline Project (NSGP) was allegedly hatched by anti-Russia elements in Pakistan in order to fail the project, Online news agency has learnt.

A private media outlet had recently reported that the Russian company leading the NSGP project has been banned.

The Pakistani government has termed the news fake and fabricated, adding that such reports are an attempt to fail the project. According to details, Pakistan and Russia had entered into a government-to-government agreement for the development of the NorthSouth Gas Pipeline Project on October 16, 2015.

The Russian side had submitted the initial commercial proposal in November 2016. However, some anti-

Russia elements sitting in Pakistan remained active against the project and published a fabricated report to sabotage the process. The conspiracy is part of the campaign to stop investors from investing in Pakistan.

A comprehensive investigation into the matter by this correspondent revealed that neither the contracting Russian company nor its chairman was banned, adding that ETK Company was indigenously established in Russia

and was currently operating under the Russian Ministry of Energy.

The company provides transportation of gas pipeline services and it has the required capability to complete the NSGP project in Pakistan.

The $2 billion contract signed between Islamabad and Moscow involved Pakistan company North-South Gas Pipeline Private Limited, Russia's Eurasia Pipeline Consortium LLC (ETK) and State Unitary Enterprise.

MARKET WEEKLY

Stocks extend gains with 683-point rally KARACHI STAFF REPORT

Bull run continued at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Friday, as the indices accumulated gains all day long, helping the benchmark KSE-100 index cross the 43,000 mark for the first time since mid-2018.

The index has gained 1,849.49 points in the last two sessions while its one-week return was recorded at 2.08pc. Foreign investors ended the previous session as net buyers with a net inflow of $2.89 million. Major buying was witnessed in the fertiliser

sector (a net inflow of $3.38 million).

On the economic front, Pakistan’s total liquid foreign exchange reserves remained almost flat at $18,085 million, as on January 03, 2020. The reserves stood at $18,081 million in the previous week (Dec 27, 2019).

Gathering 718.71 points, the KSE100 Index touched its intraday high at 43,241.78. It closed higher by 638.98 points at 43,207.05. The KMI-30 Index appreciated by 1,303.90 points to close at 70,790.23, while the KSE All Share Index gained 403.79 points, settling at 30,058.45. Out of the total traded shares, 216 advanced while 110 declined. Sec-

tors that helped that index accumulate gains included banking (+196.33 points), oil & gas exploration (+194.75 points) and power generation & distribution (+87.29 points). Among the companies, Pak Petroleum Limited (PPL +105.32 points), Hub Power Company Limited (HUBC +98.15 points) and Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDC +81.18 points) added maximum points to the index.

The overall trading volumes improved from 362.49 million to 399.62 million. The Bank of Punjab (BOP +6.06pc) once again led the volume chart, followed by TRG Pakistan Limited

(TRG -0.39pc) and Unity Foods Limited (UNITY -0.93pc). The scripts had exchanged 52.48 million, 25.77 million and 19.96 million shares, respectively.

In a notification sent to the exchange, ICI Pakistan Limited (ICI +4.53pc) has announced that its subsidiary, NutriCo Morinaga (Private) Ltd, has commenced its commercial operations of Morinaga infant and growing up formula products at its manufacturing facility in Sheikhupura, Punjab. The manufacturing facility, with a capacity of 12,000 tonnes per annum, was setup at a cost of Rs5.5 billion.

Cantonment boards approach MoF to settle revenue dispute with provinces finance ministry liKely to taKe up the issue in next nfc meeting ISLAMABAD GHULAM ABBAS

Over 50 cantonment boards across the country have approached the Ministry of Finance, seeking their due share of general sales tax (GST) through National Finance Commission (NFC), since the provinces are not sharing the revenue.

As per the documents available with this scribe, the cantonment boards, which are under the control of the Military Lands & Cantonments Department (ML&C), have complained that the provincial governments are not regularly providing funds to their respective boards despite repeated requests and reminders. The CBs, through the Ministry of Defence, in-

formed the Finance Division that up till 2018-2019, the provincial governments had held over Rs5.6 billion worth shares of CBs, of which a major chunk of the defaulted amount was on part of the Sindh government. According to documents, Sindh had held over Rs4.3 billion worth shares of Karachi and Hyderabad cantonment boards; Punjab had held around Rs700 million, while Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had kept Rs511.5 million and Rs47 million, respectively.

Sources revealed that the provincial governments, especially Sindh and Balochistan, were reluctant to share additional revenue in line with the increase in the number and jurisdiction of the boards.

Prior to July 1999, municipal corpo-

rations/committees and district councils were authorised to collect Octroi and Zila Tax (OZT). Out of the total collected OZT, a reasonable share was transferred to cantonment boards situated within the limits of these corporations/committees.

Some cantonment boards used to collect OZT independently. Later, in pursuance of a decision of the Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee (IPCC) in 1999 to abolish OZT, the rate of GST was raised from 12.5pc to 15pc with a view to utilising the additional collection exclusively to offset provincial losses due to abolition of OZT. Consequently, the provincial governments started transferring funds to municipal corporations/committees out of their divisible pool share for onward distribution to cantonment boards. In 2006, through Presidential Order (Distribution of Revenues and Grants-in-Aid [Amendment]), an amount of net proceeds of 1/6th of sales tax (2.5pc additionality of sales tax) was

earmarked for the provinces for further transfer of such amounts to the district governments and cantonment boards without retaining any part thereof. As per practice in vogue soon after the abolition of OZT, provinces were making payments to the CBs. However, according to sources, a dispute over the quantum of the amount and number of boards had emerged between the provincial governments during the past few years, as provincial governments wanted to continue with what was decided previously while the CBs wanted an increased share as per the number of boards and expanded jurisdiction.

According to finance ministry officials, the centre transfers NFC shares to the provinces as per formula agreed in the NFC Award. In the 7th NFC Award, which is in operation with effect from 2010, "There is no legal binding on provinces to make payment to the cantonment boards."But after the 18th amend-

ment in the constitution, it is the prerogative of the provinces to transfer funds to local councils and cantonment boards.

The Finance Division, according to the officials, has, however, suggested the provinces to establish their Provincial Finance Commissions for distribution of revenues between the provincial governments and their respective local councils.

As per the officials, the finance ministry has also suggested the Ministry of Defence to take up this matter at the forum of Council of Common Interest (CCI) as there is no legal binding on provinces to release funds to CBs under the existing distribution of resources (7th NFC Award).

As the Ministry of Defence has requested the Finance Division to take up this matter with NFC for further arrangements, the finance ministry may take up the matter regarding the release of funds to CBs in the next NFC meeting.

Sheheryar Munawar hoSTed a Grand winTer BaSh

By KauKaB Jahan

the funky poses. The cosy outdoors venue was

T

He heartthrob of Pakistani entertainment scene, Sheheryar Munawar hosted a party with the official launch of a nicotine pouch brand of Pakistan.

Held in the outskirts of Karachi city, the party was graced by the presence of the who’s who of Pakistani entertainment industry, all of whom looked ravishing.

The decor of the event included a thematically fitting blue carpet and a massive chair wall which also perfectly served as the photo wall.

One could find a Glam Booth inside where one could get a 180 degree photo GIF shot, with all

full of people conversing in the corners or grooving on the dance floor as the DJ pumped out killer beats throughout the night. The cool and breezy colour theme, in perfect sync with the chilly winter night was adding to the allure of the ambience.

The act of the night was an aerial hoop dance performance by Filipino performer named Faith. everyone watched in awe as Faith tangled, twirled and swirled her body in and around the hoop up in the air.

As the party continued till the wee hours, more renowned personalities showed up including Model Abeer Rizvi, Abeera Habib, Zhalay Sarhadi, Hira Hussain and producer Sadia Jabbar.

YASHMA GILL SET TO PLAY A PIVOTAL ROLE IN BILAL ABBAS KHAN’S UPCOMING DRAMA “PYAR KE SADQAY”

HOLLYWOOD BOLLYWOOD

The talented actress and YouTube sensation, Yashma Gill is confirmed to play a pivotal role in Bilal Abbas Khan’s next project “Pyar Ke Sadqay” - that is set to go on Hum TV in early 2020.

Produced under the banner of Moomal Productions, the serial is directed by Baaghi famed director Farooq Rind and stars Yumna Zaidi as the lead with Bilal & Yashma along with Umair Rana & Atiqa Odho.

Yashma Gill stars as an innocent girl who will set on a journey of realization, regrets, and self-discovery. As she tries to get out of the shackles of her past mistakes and lapse of judgments, she faces the harsh realities of life. alking about this new role, the excited star said, “When I first read the script, I instantly knew I wanted to take up this role. The character was surely a challenge because she has a lot of dimensions to her personality. I can’t wait for everyone to watch it!”

Due to her remarkable acting prowess, the

young and talented actor has taken over our tv screens in a very short period of time. Having garnered acclaim for her roles in Qurban, Ghar

Doctor Strange 2 Going Diversity Route For Villains It's being claimed that Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios are going the diversification route for the villains of the Doctor Strange 2 movie, which recently lost director Scott Derrickson over "creative differences."

The rumor claims that Feige is casting two villains for the flick, possibly Nightmare and Lilith.

It's said that a 30s-40s African-American is wanted for a villain, thought to be Nightmare, with the second villain being a 30s-40s female with Marvel open to ethnicity, for Lilith.

It's also known that elizabeth Olsen is set to star in Doctor Strange 2, with her WandaVision Disney Plus series directing leading into the flick.

Likewise, the Tom Hiddleston Loki Disney Plus series said to feature a female Loki and an LGBTQ Loki - will tie into Doctor Strange 2 as well.

Marvel has yet to name a new director and Doctor Strange: In The Multiverse Of Madness still has the same release date, May 7, 2021.

Titli Ka Par, Ki Jaana Main Kaun, Piya Naam Ka Diya, and the currently on air “Alif”, Yashma Gill has proven her versatility.

Silver Surfer, Beta Ray Bill Rumored For Thor 4 Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill, two fan-favorite cosmic characters, may be working their way into Thor 4, according to rumors.

The Lords of the Long Box Twitter account tweeted out that they heard the two characters, who Marvel Comics recently published as part of the Annihilation Scourge storyline, will be in Thor: Love and Thunder.

"Inside source has told us that Silver Surfer & Beta Ray Bill are planned for Thor: Love and Thunder," the Twitter account claims. "Great if you own Silver Surfer 4! This book has blown up ever since Disney got the rights back from FOX! I don't give a sh-t what actor plays either them, they'll both be CGI." Regarding who could be playing the characters in the MCU, most recently saw it claimed that former Batman actor Christian Bale may suit up in mo-cap to play Beta Ray Bill in Thor 4 or possibly as The Minotaur; it's said that Christian Bale is currently in talks with Marvel for Love and Thunder.

Regarding the MCU version of the Silver Surfer, Marvel's Sentinel of the Spaceways and herald of Galactus, previous rumors have offered up that none other than Keanu Reeves is being considered to play the part.

CMYK

Crayola means "oily chalk." The name combines craie (French for "chalk") and ola (short for "oleaginous," or "oily").

Truman Show Delusion is a mental condition marked by a patient's belief that he or she is the star of an imaginary reality show.

Cookie Monster is not changing his name. In a 2012 episode he said, "We've got to stop this Veggie Monster rumor before me reputation ruined."

Kangana Ranaut calls herself ‘dominating’: ‘I have never been intimidated by any powerful person’ Kangana Ranaut says she has a natural instinct to challenge authority and that she is a dominating person by nature. She was speaking at function called Think edu 2020, hosted by the New Indian express.

“I have never been intimidated by any powerful person and authority. I have a natural instinct to challenge authority and to test them, and it’s very natural. Authority asks you for a certain submission, certain surrender. For that, it’s very important to test the authority,” she said, adding she is both ‘dominating’ and ‘devotional’ by nature. “To be honest, I think I am a dominating person by nature, but I am also very devotional.”

Talking about who could make her surrender, she said, “So, if I find somebody who is worthy of the position they are taking, I am the first one to surrender. But, I do test them. They may be powerful for others, I find them truly powerless.”

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

14 SPORTS

ICC should not mandate fourday tests 'for the sake of It', warns andrew strauss

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SPORTS DESK

NDREW Strauss, the former England opener and ECB director of cricket who now sits on the ICC's cricket committee, has warned that any move towards making four-day Tests mandatory "should be an easy sell or we shouldn't be doing it".

As revealed by ESPNcricinfo, cricket's governing body is mulling the possibility of stipulating that World Test Championship matches be played over four days - with a minimum of 98 overs per day - from 2023 onwards.

However, while conceding that efforts had to be made to improve the health of Test cricket globally, Strauss suggested game length was "only one part" of the discussion.

"If you asked how many people want to reduce Test matches down from five days to four, the answer is probably not that many," Strauss told the Guardian. "My gut feeling is that we should be looking at the whole picture, how Test cricket can be looking

as healthy as possible in future, then work back from that.

"We shouldn't assume Test cricket is healthy just because it is popular in England. In lots of parts of the world, boards are struggling financially and Test cricket is not paying the bills. So we have to look at ways to improve the product for all.

That's the spectacle, the cricket itself,

Serena Williams auctions signed dress for Australian bushfire appeal

the costs, the schedules, the pitches, the balls, the experience. We need a World Test Championship that is meaningful and compelling. The length of the game is only one part of that bigger discussion.

"This isn't something that is being proposed with an agenda behind it. No one wants to change for the sake of it.

It should be an easy sell or we should-

n't be doing it."

Strauss, under whose captaincy England held the No. 1 Test ranking between 2011 and 2012, also highlighted the concern that pitches in Asia may not deteriorate enough over four days in order to produce results.

The ICC's cricket committee, currently chaired by Anil Kumble, is set to meet in March to discuss the proposals - which could free up considerable room in cricket's crowded international schedule - before putting their recommendations to the executive body. Two other members of the cricket committee, former Sri Lanka batsman Mahela Jayawardene and Mickey Arthur, Sri Lanka's coach, both expressed their preference for five-day Tests earlier this week.

There have been plenty of dissenting voices among current players, too, with the Federation of International Cricketers' Associations demanding clarity about how the change would positively affect the calendar, amid fears any space made could be filled by "additional or meaningless cricket".

Cricket legend Warne's cap raises Aus$1m for bushfire appeal

SPORTS DESK

SPORTS DESK

Tennis star Serena Williams put up a signed dress, worn at her first tournament of the year, for auction to raise funds for firefighters tackling Australia's unprecedented bushfire emergency.

Williams, who is preparing for this month's Australian Open at the WTA Auckland Classic, joins a slate of sports stars from around the world who have stumped up memorabilia and cash to help pay for firefighting efforts. "I have so many friends in Australia and it's just been really tragic all around," the 23time Grand Slam champion said on Friday. "I just keep asking every day to people back home or in Australia, what can I do? Is there anything I can do? It's literally devastating for me and I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way."

Her outfit, listed as "a bespoke Nike dress made specifically for Serena", was worn by the American when she beat Italy's Camila Giorgi in the first round at Auckland. Williams progressed to the tournament's semi-finals on Friday.

Also for sale is a tennis ball signed by Williams and Caroline Wozniacki, as well as a one-hour private training session from Serena's long-time mentor Patrick Mouratoglou.

Cricket star Shane Warne's "baggy green" cap sold at auction for more than Aus$1 million (nearly $700,000) on Friday, with all funds going to help victims of bushfires raging in Australia.

The spin legend wore the cap during his 145-Test career, in which he took more than 700 wickets, and said he was blown away after a late bidding war pushed the price to Aus$1,007,500. It far exceeded the Aus$425,000 paid at auction for the cap belonging to the legendary Donald Bradman when that was sold for charity in 2003.

"Thank you so much to everyone that placed a bid & a huge Thank you/ congrats to the successful bidder - you have blown me away with your generosity and this was way beyond my expectations," he tweeted. "The money will go direct to the Red Cross bushfire appeal. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you."

The item comes with an autographed certificate of authenticity from Warne. The identity of the successful bidder not immediately

Mathews back as Sri Lanka bowl; India include Pandey, Samson SPORTS DESK Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to bowl first in the third T20I at Pune, as the hosts made three changes to the XI that won comfortably on Tuesday. Batsman Manish Pandey comes into the middle order, replacing Shivam Dube. Wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant exits the XI to make way for Sanju Samson. On the bowling front, meanwhile, India have just swapped wristspinners, bringing in legbreak bowler Yuzvendra Chahal for Kuldeep Yadav. Sri Lanka have made two changes of their own, the most significant of which is to bring Angelo Mathews into the XI. He has not played a T20 international since mid2018, and replaces Bhanuka Rajapaksa in the lineup. The injured Isuru Udana also makes way for left-arm wristspinner Lakshan Sandakan. The weather is expected to remain good through the course of the game. India: 1 Shikhar Dhawan, 2 KL Rahul, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 Manish Pandey , 6 Sanju Samson (wk), 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Shardul Thakur, 9 Yuzvendra Chahal, 10 Navdeep Saini 11 Jasprit Bumrah Sri Lanka: 1 Danushka Gunathilaka, 2 Avishka Fernando, 3 Kusal Perera (wk), 4 Oshada Fernando, 5 Angelo Mathews, 6 Dhananjaya de Silva, 7 Dasun Shanaka, 8 Lakshan Sandakan, 9 Wanindu Hasaranga, 10 Lasith Malinga (capt), 11 Lahiru Kumara

Defending Champ Matloob Ahmed leading on R2 of Bank AL Habib’s Golf Tournament 2020 KARACHI PRESS RELEASE

known. The "baggy green" is awarded to Australian players when they make their Test debut and is worn as a badge of pride when they are on the field.

Warne decided to put the cap up for auction on Monday to help those who have suffered in the catastrophic fires that have devastated parts of the country and left at least 26 people dead and almost 2,000 homes destroyed.

"The horrific bushfires in Australia have left us all in disbelief.

The impact these devastating fires are having on so many people is unthinkable and has touched us

all," he said then on Instagram.

"Everyone is in this together and we continue to find ways to contribute and help on a daily basis."

Fellow cricketers Chris Lynn, Glenn Maxwell and D'Arcy Short have pledged to donate Aus$250 for every six they smash during the ongoing Big Bash League Twenty20 tournament.

Top tennis players have also got involved, with world number one Ashleigh Barty donating her winnings from this week's Brisbane International to the Red Cross, although she was knocked out at the first hurdle.

Last year’s defending champion of Bank AL Habib’s 9th Rashid D. Habib Memorial National Professional Golf Tournament- Matloob Ahmed seemed aggressive from his first teeshot as the tournament continued on second day at Karachi Golf Club. Matloob hit his second shot on the green on par 5 to lead on R2 leaderboard with five under par gross 139. But, Matloob’s second day’s position is tied with M Munir with the same five under 139. Country’s National Golfer Muhammad Shabbir is following them as runner-up with four under par gross 140. First day’s leader M Naeem is holding 4th position and that too tied with Muhammad Alam by scoring 141 gross 3 under. The 92 professional golfers from all over Pakistan handled difficult situations today due to Karachi’s windy condition at the greens. The final round will be played on Sunday, 12th January, 2020, followed by Prize Distribution ceremony.

Father's memory inspired Hayden Walsh to match-winning knock against Ireland

SPORTS DESK Hayden Walsh has said that he was inspired by the 10-year anniversary of his father's death after helping to secure a

tense, one-wicket win for West Indies in Barbados.

The match at Kensington Oval went down to the penultimate ball, with No. 9 Walsh unbeaten on 46 when Sheldon Cot-

trell hit a six to seal victory. Walsh was batting for only the third time in his ODI career, but shared in partnerships of 52 and 32 for the eighth and ninth wickets as West Indies recovered from 148 for 7 to hold off Ireland and take a 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

Walsh, 27, said that he had been confident of getting the job done, having played as batting allrounder at Under-19s level.

Still, there were a couple of nervy moments with victory in sight, as Cottrell was nearly run out twice in consecutive deliveries during the final over - with the bowler, Mark Adair, fumbling on both occasions.

"It was nerve-wracking," Walsh said. "I went down to Sheldon and he said he was not in but he thinks the guy dropped the ball, so I was more confident on that one. The last one, I didn't expect him to come back for [a second run], because the guy has the ball in his hands, so I didn't want to take any un-

CMYK

wanted risks and lose a wicket.

"I also backed Sheldon to do his part.

I wasn't looking to get the strike unless it was the last ball. I was hoping that he would get a single or we could scramble one and I could face the last ball."

Asked if the crowd's support had had an impact, Walsh, who plays for Barbados Tridents in the CPL, said that he had been more focused on the date, 10 years on from losing his father, also called Hayden Walsh, as a teenager.

"Today marks the 10th anniversary of my father's death and I got that inspiration to take the team over the line," he said.

"It was a bit overwhelming. I was talking myself through the whole innings and to get over the line was like a long journey. Felt like I had just run a whole marathon."

Before eking out the last few runs with Cottrell, Walsh put on vital stands with Khary Pierre and Alzarri Joseph. "I

reassured them that we're going to do this, all we need to do is watch the ball and look at the scoreboard," he said.

West Indies and Ireland face off again in one more ODI, in Grenada on Sunday, before playing three T20Is. Despite the gap between the sides narrowing sharply, following West Indies' five-wicket win on Tuesday, Walsh said there was no sense of the home side taking their opponents lightly. "We were excepting them to come back hard," Walsh said. "The performance that they did in the first game, I wouldn't say it would reflect what they'd like. So I was expecting them to come back harder and give a better shot of winning the game.

"They wanted it a little bit more, but it's cricket, you can't just come and 'bang, bang, bang' and win a game, you have to actually build an innings. I don't think we did that very well and the Irish bowled pretty well."

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

PCB ChIef says won't settle for anythIng less than two tests agaInst Bangladesh

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SPORTS DESK

HE anxiety level of Pakistan’s cricket authorities heightened on Thursday when the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) once again delayed a decision on sending its team to Pakistan later this month.

A local news outlet reported that the PCB was now getting impatient as it has to start finalising preparations for the twoTest series which is supposed to get underway in Karachi later this month.

But the BCB bosses aren’t making it easy for their Pakistani counterparts.

While responding to a PCB letter regarding Bangladesh’s tour of Pakistan, BCB President Nazmul Hassan in a telephonic conversation with PCB chairman Ehsan Mani said that his Board will be in a position to take a final decision on the issue on Monday (January 13).

Mani, according to sources, told Hassan in a polite yet firm tone that the PCB would settle for nothing less than a twoTest series, which will be part of the ICC World Test Championship.

Bangladesh have been insisting on playing just one Test match in Pakistan.

They are also willing to play three T20 In-

ternationals but the Pakistanis have refused to agree to that.

Mani has made it clear to the BCB boss that the least PCB will settle for is a two-Test series. PCB has made it clear that if the duration of the tour was an issue then they can reschedule the T20 series for some other slot but there would be no compromise on the two-match Test series.

The reason why PCB are adamant on having two Tests at home rather the one as suggested by BCB is simple: A one-off Test match won’t count in the ICC Test Championship. “It has to be at least a two-Test championship like the one we

Pakistan is one of the safest places in the world, says Chris Gayle SPORTS DESK Windies batting great Chris Gayle has termed Pakistan as "one of the safest places in the world" saying that the country provided presidential-level security to its cricketing guests. "Pakistan is one of the safest places right now in the world. They say you will get presidential security so you are in good hands," Gayle told reporters.Gayle, who is currently playing for Chattogram Challangers in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) said that he would like to extend his time in the sport for as long as he can as the 40-year-old felt that he had "a lot to offer". "A lot of people still want [to] see Chris Gayle out there and I would love to carry on as long as possible," Gayle said. "Even in franchise cricket I am still playing a few games here and there around the globe because I still feel I have a lot to offer." The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had invited Bangladesh to play three T20I and two Tests however, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has proposed to play the T20s on home ground while the Tests be staged on neutral ground, with no formal reasoning. The PCB on the other hand, has maintained that it would no longer play its home series abroad as security concerns have been addressed with the successful hosting of the Sri Lanka series. The BCB is expected to take a final decision when the board meets on Sunday.

hosted against Sri Lanka recently,” a local news outlet reported a senior PCB official as saying on Thursday night.

The official said that the BCB chief told Mani that a final decision on his team’s tour of Pakistan remains a work in progress and that he will be able to convey it after a BCB Board meeting in Dhaka on January 12.

“He [BCB President] made a phone call to Mr Mani and sought time till Monday to make a final call on Bangladesh team’s tour of Pakistan,” said the official.

The BCB has been dilly dallying on their team’s Pakistan visit for quite some time. But in recent days, PCB has been pushing for a decision and for the obvious reason that the short window that they have for the Test series against Bangladesh would soon be closing.

The PCB will be hosting a full season of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) at home starting February 20. This means that they have to start and finish the home series against Bangladesh well in advance of the PSL’s inaugural match.

“Time is running out which is why the PCB is now anxiously awaiting a final decision on the tour from the BCB chiefs,” said the official.

England's Buttler fined over verbal abuse at South Africa's Philander SPORTS DESK England wicketkeeper Jos Buttler was fined 15 percent of his match fee on Thursday by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for swearing at South Africa's Vernon Philander during the second Test at Newlands. Buttler was heard on the stump mic using an obscenity towards South African all-rounder Philander while keeping wicket on a tense final day in Cape Town. The 29-year-old will also pick up one demerit point for breaching the ICC's disciplinary code, his first such offence.

Players can be suspended if they accumulate four demerit points over a two-year period. "Buttler was found to have breached Article 2.3 of the ICC Code of Conduct for Players and Player Support Personnel, which relates to 'use of an audible obscenity during an international match' following an incident with South Africa all-rounder Vernon Philander," read an ICC statement. "Buttler admitted the offence and accepted the sanction proposed by Andy Pycroft of the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Match Referees and, as such, there was no need for a formal hearing." England won the match by 189 runs on a thrilling fifth day to level the four-match series at 11. The third Test begins on January 16 at Port Elizabeth.

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Haris Rauf sets sights on World T20 following meteoric rise SPORTS DESK Haris Rauf went to Australia with the hope of a Hobart Hurricanes contract, but has instead hit the jackpot with the Melbourne Stars, lighting up the Big Bash with his exhilarating fast bowling. He was originally signed up for only three games as cover for Dale Steyn, but he has been retained for the whole tournament following an injury to the English quick Pat Brown and is expected to confirm an extension for next season soon.

Rauf, 26, was only discovered three years ago in open trials by the PSL franchise Lahore Qalandars in Gujranwala, but became hot property within two weeks of playing the Big Bash. He already has a five-wicket haul and a hat-trick, taking 13 wickets so far in just four games to make him the joint-second-highest wicket-taker in the tournament. These performances in a highly competitive environment have instilled Rauf with the belief that he is close to fulfilling his dream of playing for his country.

"It's a completely different experience here," Rauf told ESPNcricinfo.

"The standard of cricket, the crowd and the atmosphere around make you truly absorbed in the game. Every moment in the field is enjoyable and the enthusiasm from the crowd really intensifies your passion. It is a really great time out here for me and I am making most out of it. I know I have proved my potential and my next goal is to play for Pakistan in the T20 World Cup, which is also in Australia.

"I never really planned my future in cricket. I grew up playing with a tennis ball until 2017, and never thought that I could play for Pakistan.

But this dream was given to me by Lahore Qalandars and Aaqib Javed's persistence with me gave me direction. He has been a driving force for me. I had a feeling that a pure fast bowler bowling over 140kph can't be ignored in Pakistan. I have the pace, the passion, and with all the development I started to believe that I can play top-level cricket."

ESPNcricinfo understands that Rauf was sent to Australia by Lahore Qalandars with the intention of attending trials with the Hurricanes, who wanted to have a look at him before signing a full season's contract in November. During his stay he was linked with Glenorchy in Hobart, in Tasmania's Premier League, and took 4 for 12 in a T20 game against Clarence including the wicket of the Australia and Hurricanes batsman D'Arcy Short.

The Hurricanes didn't pick him up, and Nick Cummins, the general

manager, commercial and marketing, for the Melbourne BBL sides, called the Qalandars CEO Sameen Rana, offering Rauf a short-term opportunity when Steyn suffered a side strain.

Rauf shot to prominence alongside another fast bowler, Salman Irshad, when both were in the race for the third edition of the PSL. Rauf previously played for Western Suburbs Cricket Club in Sydney, where he was injured playing two-day cricket after bowling nearly 26 overs per day. Aaqib set He was given a target by Aaqib, to add ten kilos to his 73kg frame in order to aid his development.

"I was excited and was taking wickets and pushing myself hard," Rauf said. "Fitness has been an issue because until 2017 I never really had any sense about it. Never thought about it because I had been playing tennisball cricket and never been disciplined with fitness and diet. I only started to hear about its importance when I signed with the Lahore Qalandars development program. In Pakistan when you grow up as an immature cricketer the word fitness is just an alien to you.

You hear it, but you never really understood its significance.

"But when I first came Australia with Qalandars, who linked me with a club, I saw the lifestyle around the sportsmen, how they train and how they enhance their performance. What are their routines and how they pull themselves together in the off-season to get ready for the active season.

How they avoid injuries by getting fitter, so I learnt all this from here and the fitter you are, the more control you have of your game and performance."

Rauf missed PSL 3 and returned to Western Suburbs in 2018 with a promotion to the first grade and later earned a place in the Qalandars' PSL side for the fourth edition of the tournament, his first major break. He took 11 wickets in 10 matches, with an economy rate of 7.41, including a match-winning 4 for 23 against the Karachi Kings.

Rauf idolises Steyn and playing in his place was an "honour" for him. "I admire him a lot," he said. "He has done great for his country, he is a tremendous fast bowler and is a perfect role model for any youngster who wants to become a fast bowler. With him around you have a lot to learn and sharing a dressing room with your hero is like a dream come true. If he isn't playing it's in a way a loss for me because I am not able to share the ball with him. His aggression is the thing I love about him. I obviously follow his work ethics, lifestyle and ability to control the line with outswingers."

Rahmanullah Gurbaz is dreaming of bigger things SPORTS DESK Afghanistan keeper-batsman Rahmanullah Gurbaz idolises AB de Villiers, so some fans now call him "Mr 360" after de Villiers' incredible batting style. Gurbaz says he does indeed love to watch de Villiers and MS Dhoni bat, but he has no plans "to be like them". All he can do, he says, is grow into a quality cricketer to play for his country.

In Bangladesh right now, playing for Khulna Tigers in the BPL, Gurbaz announced himself with an 18-ball fifty in his first game. A string of low scores thereafter put him out of the playing XI for four games, but, with a place in the playoff on the line, Khulna could do with Gurbaz's attacking strengths in the top order for their last three games.

He has enjoyed the experience of mixing with international players like Mushfiqur Rahim, Rilee Rossouw and Robbie Frylinck in the BPL. "When you are with good

players for four or five weeks, it is a good opportunity for me," Gurbaz said. "I am trying to learn from them. Rossouw and Mushfiqur are experienced players. I talk to them a lot. I want to learn from them.

I am trying hard to become an all-format player."

There has been a lot of upheaval in Afghanistan cricket in 2019 and Gurbaz is one of many young cricketers being tried out in a particular format. But he also fills the hole left by Mohammad Shahzad, who has been suspended by the Afghanistan board for a year for breaching the code of conduct.

In Shahzad's place, Gurbaz, 18, made an impact in Afghanistan's T20I side over the last four months - scoring quick runs against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh in the tri-series in September and then 79 against West Indies in Lucknow in November.

"My first international series [in Bangladesh] was a good experience. It was a chal-

lenging time for me. I had never played in front of a big crowd like I did in that series.

The captain and coach told me to try hard and believe in myself. It is how I bat. I won't change my style in one-day cricket. It is my natural style. I will bat this way in every format. I like to sweep and try to play straight."

Gurbaz says that while he wants to play orthodox cricketing shots as an opener, if the situation demands, he will slog. He doesn't have to do it often given his attractive array of drives but there is one shot he likes to play on the on side: the sweep against both pace and spin.

"I work really hard on every shot. When you read the situation, like when you need to slog, you should do it for your country. But as an opener, I don't want to get too excited and want to stick to normal cricket shots."

Playing as a football goalkeeper during his teens in his home town of Khost in southeastern Afghanistan, Gurbaz

came late to cricket, inspired by a first generation of players who took their team to unthinkable heights in a short span of time.

"I loved football before I played cricket. But when our cricket team started to do well, especially players like Nawroz Mangal and Mohammad Nabi, I got inspired. I used to be a goalkeeper so now I have become a wicketkeeper.

"I think they were playing Ireland or Netherlands when I first saw them on TV. Cricket wasn't famous in Afghanistan but at that time my feeling was that I want to play for my nation."

He was first spotted by local coach Mohammad Khan Zadran, who believed that Gurbaz was made for bigger things.

"When I was 13, I used to play village cricket with tennis balls. The Khost province coach spotted me and said I should play hard-ball cricket in the academy. My father didn't agree, but I started to go two or three days a week. Zadran helped me a lot. Within a

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month I was in the Under-17 team. Then I got into professional cricket through U-19, the emerging team, the A team, and now the national team.

"My father is the principal of a school. He told me to focus on my studies and become a doctor. My family wasn't keen on cricket but now they are proud of me. They also watch my matches."

Things are different five years on because of how rapidly the game has captured the country's imagination. Seeing the national team's success, more Afghan parents are now opening up to the idea of their children pursuing cricket seriously. Gurbaz said if you walk around Kabul or any other city or town in Afghanistan these days, you can spot cricket academies and impromptu matches everywhere.

Gurbaz represents the second wave of cricket in Afghanistan, one that is quickly trying to find its place in world cricket, both internationally and in the T20 market.

PSL 2020 tickets to go on sale from Jan 20: report SPORTS DESK The ticket sale for the upcoming Pakistan Super League (PSL) 2020 will kick off from January 20.

According to reports, the league is expected to finalise its policy regarding ticket prices and other matters by Jan 18. Meanwhile, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) reportedly intends to keep ticket prices at the minimum in a bid to attract large audience to the stadia. According to sources close to the PCB, the prices of the enclosures will range from Rs500 to Rs3,000. It is expected that the ticket price of day matches will be significantly lower to the ones played under floodlights.

Saturday, 11 January, 2020

NEWS US announces new sanctions against top Iran officials, metals industry The United States on Friday announced fresh sanctions against eight top Iranian officials it accused of working to destabilise the region, as well as against more than a dozen leading producers of metals in the Islamic republic. “As a result of these actions, we will cut off billions of dollars of support to the Iranian regime,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters at a White House briefing. Among the senior Iranian officials targeted in the new measures were Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, the Iranian armed forces deputy chief of staff and Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij militia, a volunteer force loyal to the regime. The US Treasury also slapped sanctions on 17 Iranian metals producers and mining companies which it said generated billions of dollars in revenue.

The sanctions also included a network of three entities that are based in China and the Seychelles as well as a vessel “involved in the purchase, sale, and transfer of Iranian metals products”, the Treasury said in a statement. AGENCIES

India's Sc orders govt to review all restrictive orders in held kashmir within a week NEW DELHI AGENCIES

India’s Supreme Court on Friday, while hearing petitions challenging the restrictions on movement and communication imposed in occupied Kashmir since August 5, said that freedom of the internet is a fundamental right and ordered the administration to review all restrictive orders within a week. In a rebuke for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, the court termed shutting down the internet “unconstitutional”. “Freedom of speech and expression includes right to the internet within Article 19 of the Constitution. So the restrictions on the internet has to follow the principles of proportionality under Article 19(2),” said the Supreme Court bench, according to Hindustan Times. The court observed that internet suspension without “any particular duration and indefinitely” is a violation of telecom rules, reported The Wire. The bench also said that all orders imposing restrictions should be published so that they can be challenged in courts of law. Restriction on fundamental rights cannot be done by an arbitrary exercise of powers, the bench further said.

WASHINGTON AGENCIES

US lawmakers concerned about rushing to war with Iran adopted a measure Thursday aimed at reining in President Donald Trump’s ability to take military action against the Islamic republic.

The resolution was introduced by Democrats after Trump’s order to kill an Iranian commander and retaliatory missile strikes by Tehran dramatically escalated tensions and raised fears of a devastating war between the two foes.

The mostly symbolic but politically charged vote, 224 to 194, was largely along party lines, with three members of Trump’s Republican Party joining Democrats in approving the measure demanding the president not engage in military action against Iran unless authorized by Congress.

Among them was Matt Gaetz, one of Trump’s staunchest supporters in

Pressure builds on iran as Western PoWers suggest it doWned ukrainian Plane Government offIcIalS from aUStralIa, BrItaIn, canada and the US BelIeve It IS lIkely the kyIv-BoUnd paSSenGer plane waS UnIntentIonally StrUck By a Stray IranIan mISSIle, kIllInG all 176 people on Board

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HE leaders of Australia, Canada and the U.K. all believe evidence suggests an Iranian missile brought down a Ukrainian passenger plane earlier this week, killing all 176 people on board, with analysts expressing concern that intensifying international pressure against Tehran will trigger a diplomatic crisis.

Most of the passengers on Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 were from Iran and Canada. Other passengers came from countries including Sweden and Ukraine.

The crash occurred Wednesday morning, a few hours after Iran launched ballistic attacks on military bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq, prompting a theory that the Kyiv-bound passenger plane may have been unintentionally struck by a stray missile.

Government officials from Australia, Britain, Canada and the U.S. have since said they believe this theory is likely, based on new information.

Iran has denied the plane was brought down by a missile.

“If the preliminary assessments prove accurate, the diplomatic fallout for Iran will be significant in the short term,” analysts at Eurasia Group said in a research

Iran invites Boeing to probe Ukrainian plane crash that killed 176 TEHRAN: Iran has invited Boeing to take part in the investigation into the Ukrainian jetliner, a Boeing 737, that crashed earlier this week at a time of soaring tensions between Washington and Tehran, killing all 176 people on board, state media reported Friday. The move came after Western leaders said the plane appeared to have been unintentionally hit by a surface-to-air missile hours after Iran launched ballistic missiles at two US bases in Iraq to avenge the killing of its top general in an American airstrike. The ballistic missile attack on the bases caused no casualties, raising hopes that the standoff over the killing of Gen Qasem Soleimani would end relatively peacefully. But Iran has sent mixed signals over whether its retaliation is complete. The state-run IRNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying Iran “has invited both Ukraine and the Boeing company to participate in the investigations. The spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, said it will also welcome experts from other countries whose citizens died in the crash. US, Canadian and British officials said it is “highly likely” that Iran shot down the Boeing 737 that crashed near Tehran late on Tuesday. US officials said the jetliner might have been mistakenly identified as a threat. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose country lost at least 63 citizens in the downing, said we have intelligence from multiple sources including our allies and our own intelligence. AGENCIES

note published Thursday.

Analysts at the political risk consultancy suggested Tehran seemed to earn a “good deal of international sympathy and solidarity” after the U.S. killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani last week — with many “quietly grateful” the Islamic Republic did not respond more forcefully.

But, “the shootdown will jeopardize that diplomatic goodwill, especially if the evidence proves overwhelming and Iran continues to stridently deny it.”

‘PRETTY ROUGH NEIGHBORHOOD’: Speaking to reporters on Friday,

Iran’s Civil Aviation Authority head, Ali Abedzadeh, said Tehran wanted to download black box recordings itself.

It if needed help to decode the messages — which could reportedly take one or two months — Iran could ask for help from Russia, Canada, France or Ukraine, Abedzadeh said. Sixty-three Canadians were among the victims in the crash of the flight, which lost contact with air traffic controllers five minutes after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday morning, officials said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference on

Thursday that he had “intelligence from multiple sources including our allies and our own intelligence.”

“The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile,” Trudeau added.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued similar statements.

Canada severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012 and, despite pledges to reengage, Trudeau has not yet sought to revive formal relations.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the theory that a stray missile may have struck Flight 752 could not be confirmed yet.

‘ONE OR TWO YEARS’ TO COMPLETE FLIGHT INVESTIGATION: Under international law, the country in which the crash occurs controls the investigation, and because the plane was U.S.-made, federal investigators and Boeing, the plane’s manufacturer, would normally be involved.

However, fraught relations between the U.S. and Iran could complicate the U.S. government’s willingness or ability to send personnel to the country.

“It is quite tragic that these people were all murdered but, if anything, it creates this image of the Iranian military being trigger-happy and not being overly concerned about deaths of civilians,” Frank Lavin, former U.S. under secretary of Commerce for international trade, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Friday.

“So, if anything, I think it is going to subdue the Iranian military for the short run,” Lavin said.

An Iranian official told Reuters on Friday that it could take “one or two years” to complete an investigation into the flight. AGENCIES

8 killed in airstrike on pro-Iran militia in eastern Syria linked targets in Syria in recent years and has warned against any permanent Iranian presence on the frontier.

Deir Ezzor 24, an activist collective that reports on news in the border area, said that the planes strikes trucks carrying weapons and depots for ballistic missiles in the area.

Omar Abu Laila, a Europe-based activist from Deir el-Zour who runs the group, said the attack triggered a huge explosion heard in the Syrian-Iraqi border.

The sound and picture, another activist collective in Syria’s eastern Deir el-Zour area, said “unidentified planes” struck militia targets in Boukamal.

There was no immediate comment from Syria authorities.

The US carried out military strikes in the area on December 29, killing 25 members of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia

in retaliation to a rocket attack on a military base in Iraq that killed a US contractor. The US blamed that attack on an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia.

The reported airstrikes came days after a US drone strike killed Iran’s most powerful general after he landed at Baghdad airport, drawing angry calls for revenge and escalating tensions to the brink of an all-out war between the two sides.

Iran responded by firing a barrage of missiles at military bases in Iraq that host US troops.

Since then, both sides have signaled they were stepping back from further escalation but tensions remain high and the region on edge.

Amid the soaring tensions, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to Syria this week for talks with President Bashar Assad in Damascus.

US House votes to curb Trump’s war power on Iran

United States armed forces to engage in hostilities in or against Iran or any part of its government or military.”

But the text also provides for key exceptions, allowing the use of force to defend against or prevent an “imminent” attack against Americans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking to reporters about the resolution, said Trump “must de-escalate and must prevent further violence. America and the world cannot afford war.”

The House measure was introduced as a concurrent resolution, a form of legislation that does not carry the weight of the law. But as a political instrument, it could serve as a rebuke to Trump’s foreign policy.

Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy blasted Pelosi’s effort as a “show vote” because it cannot become law and will, therefore “never limit (Trump’s) constitutional authority to defend the American people.”

BAGHDAD AGENCIES

Unidentified planes struck targets in Syria near the border with Iraq on Friday, killing eight Iran-backed Iraqi militiamen, Syrian activists and two Iraqi officials said, an attack that comes amid soaring tensions between the US and Iran.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the planes targeted positions belonging to pro-Iran militias in the Boukamal area, near the border with Iraq.

The Britain-based organisation, which documents the war in Syria through a network of activists on the ground, said the planes struck, among other targets, weapons depots and vehicles belonging to the militias.

An Iraqi security official and another official, from the Iran-backed Iraqi mili-

Congress who noted in a floor speech that the measure did not criticize Trump, but said that “engaging in another forever war in the Middle East would be the wrong decision.”

“If the members of our armed services have the courage to go and fight and die in these wars, as Congress we ought to have the courage to vote for them or against them,” Gaetz said.

As lawmakers launched a scalding day-long debate over presidential authority, Trump insisted he needs no one’s blessing to launch attacks, essentially scorning existing legal requirements for consulting with Congress.

“I don’t have to,” Trump said when asked whether he would seek congressional approval for more military action against Iran.

tias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, said warplanes targeted two vehicles carrying missiles on the Syrian side of the border. The strike was most likely carried out by Israeli warplanes, they said but offered no evidence.

The Iraqi officials identified the eight casualties as Iraqi militia fighters while the Observatory only said the eight were not Syrians, without giving their nationality. The death toll could rise further, officials said, as there were also wounded militiamen, some reportedly in serious conditions.

Another Iraqi official said those targeted belong to the Imam Ali Brigades, an Iran-backed faction within the PMF. The three Iraqi officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to make statements to the media.

Israel has repeatedly struck Iran-

“And you shouldn’t have to,” he added, “because you have to make splitsecond decisions sometimes.”

Trump signaled Wednesday he was stepping back from the brink of war with Iran after a US drone strike that killed commander Qasem Soleimani was followed by Iranian missile volleys against bases housing American forces in Iraq.

But on Thursday he fought back against criticism that he’d ordered the killing, risking all-out conflict, without real justification. At a reelection campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio, Trump insisted, without providing any evidence, that Soleimani was “actively planning new attacks,” including against US embassies, “and we stopped him cold.”

He ridiculed his Democratic opponents in Congress, calling them insulting

names and claimed that if he had consulted with them they would have leaked the secret operation to the “fake news.”

“You should get permission from Congress,” he said mockingly to mimic the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

‘CANNOT AFFORD WAR’: But Democrats, and some Republicans, have expressed deep skepticism about the administration’s rationale for Soleimani’s killing, and are demanding Congress reassert its power over a commander in chief’s use of American military might against another nation.

Citing the War Powers Resolution of 1973 which forbids a president from taking the country to war without congressional approval, the measure “directs the president to terminate the use of the

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