HYDERABAD: Sindh United Party (SUP) president Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah has said that with allnationalresources having been diverted to Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and other such cities to develop them, Punjab is now going to become the `mini-Pakistan`, a symbolic title currently for Karachi.

He predicted an ultimate population shift to Punjab at a great pace.

However, he cautioned, it would be Punjab that could become a political bat tlefield, arguing that smaller provinces were being neglected to the extent that they now believed the prime minister did not need them. `They [smaller provinces] have become irrelevant in his scheme of things,` he said.

The SUP chief was speaking at a programme held here late on Saturday evening to observe the first death anniversary of Dr Anwar Leghari, who was shot dead on the eve of the local government elections in Qasimabad last year.

Mr Shah told the audience that under the present dispensation in Islamabad, Punjab alone was considered the federation, and warned that `this will be disastrous for that province itself`. `The incumbent rulers are a product of controlled democracy and a stigma on the face of democracy.

They consider democracy a source of loot and plunder,` he said.

In the present so-called democracy, Mr Shah claimed, candidates right from those seeking to become an MNA to the those aspiring for a councillor seat were coerced, pressured or persuaded to withdraw in favour of rival candidates. `A defiant one is even murdered,` he added.

According to the SUP chief, every institution has been bought.

He said intellectuals would pinpoint wrongs but did not suggest a way to extricate people from thesituation. `If someone tries to come out of the ditch, his friends become a hurdle,` he observed.

Sindh is a region where political activists are intelligent and have good ideas but the province has been paralysed to the extent that today it doesn`t have even potable water, proper sanitation infrastructure, peace, electricity and good governance. Pakistan is facing challenges of extremism, terrorism and corruption and both the federal and provincial governments are not able to curb the menaces, accordingto the SUP leader.

He said his party would launch a movement against the menace. He told party workers that if dishonest people ruling over the country were not handed a defeat, the future of Sindh would be in danger.

Mr Shah said that although [Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief] Imran Khan was being criticised, he was indeed struggling against institutionalised corruption in the country. People would have to rise to the occasion, he added.

Paying homage to Dr AnwarLeghari, he said many Sindhi nationalist activists had been martyred the nation had never been tired of offering such sacrifices for the motherland.

Dr Leghari was just participating in the democratic process. His murder case has remained unresolved till date despite tall claims by police.

Police did not even arrest the suspects whose names were share d with them by the victim`s heirs, Mr Shah said. He claimed that the heirs were told that he was killed by agencies.

However, he said the boss of the`forces` behind Dr Leghari`s murder was currently staying abroad luring every feudal, kamdar, corrupt etc in different manner. He said the SUP would face these forces courageously.

SUP vice president Pir Khalil Jan Sarhandi, secretary general Roshan Buriro, Dr Dodo Mahri and others, paying homage to their slain colleague, criticised IG A.D. Khowaja and SSP Hyderabad Irfan Baloch for portraying themselves as honest officers but doing nothing for the arrest of Dr Leghari`s killers.