Sardar Mengal spurns 18th amendment

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: Elderly Baloch nationalist leader, Sardar Ataullah Mengal, has rejected the 18^th Constitutional Amendments saying that it is irrelevant in the current political situation in the region.

In an interview with the BBC Urdu Service, he said that Concurrent List of the Constitution was an issue of 1970s and not now. That demand was made in 1973 and time had passed making the old demand irrelevant.

Sardar Ataullah Mengal, who was the first-ever democratically elected Chief Minister after Balochistan attained Provincial status, said that the Government was supposed to transfer those powers to the Provinces under Concurrent List in 1983. Since there were Martial Law and military rule, the Concurrent List was not transferred.

He took a tough stand on the issue of Provincial autonomy and completely rejected the present proposal to grant more powers to the provinces.

Sardar Mengal said that the Federation should retain three subjects only—Defence, Foreign Affairs and Communication—transferring all the powers to the Federating Units.

He said that there should be neat and clean elected and clean Governments should be formed as a result of the transparent and impartial elections to rule the province. Otherwise, he thought the situation will continue to remain tense and unpredictable in absence of trust between the people and the people.