People’s Party delegation in Dacca
NEW DELHI, OCT. 11- A Pakistan People’s Party delegation has arrived in Dacca to assess the prospects of the party’s chances in the coming by-election in the province, reports UNI quoting Radio Pakistan.
The party vice-president, Mrs. Mahmudi Ali Kasturi, who is heading the delegation, told newsmen in Dacca that people of East Bengal and West Pakistan should “cooperate in solving their economic and political problems.”
Referring to the regulation of political activity in Pakistan, announced on Saturday, he said time would soon come when constitutional Governments would be formed both at the center and in provinces.
According to Reuter, a leading People’s Party official dropped out of the delegation hours before it left for East Bengal, alleging that power in the eastern wing had been handed to “reactionary and anti-people parties” who had massacred political opponents.
Mr. Meiraj Mohammed Khan, the party’s Karachi secretary, said in a statement yesterday that he felt it was “futile for me to go”.
Mr. Khan alleged that in East Bengal “power in effect has been transferred to those reactionary and anti-people political parties defeated in the electionary and anti-people political parties defeated in the electionary and anti-people political parties defeated in the elections and rejected by the people.”
He named one party-the puritan Moslem Jamaat-i-Islami group of “indulging in wholesale massacre of political opponents, for which they are using their Razakars (volunteers)”.
Mr. Khan, who has influence among students, added: “Under the umbrella of a Government consisting of members of defeated and reactionary parties, elections cannot be free.”
The People’s Party leader, Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, told the party delegation yesterday; “We have watched with great anguish developments over the last eight months and I want you to convey to our brothers in the eastern wing our commitment towards national reconciliation and rebuilding a progressive and tranquil Pakistan.” The delegation includes a former Pakistan Test Cricket Captain, Mr. Hafeez Kardar.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 12.10.1971