Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The Minority Community of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Friday demanded from the provincial government to hand over of all their worship places as most of the holy places in the province were in control of influential people with vested interests attached to such holy sites.

There are more than 47,000 Hindu community persons living in the province. The estimated number of Christians was 225,000 besides 5,000 Sikh, 4,223 Kalash and 63 Bahai religion followers.

Chairman All Pakistan Hindu Rights Movement Haroon Sarab Diyal, while talking to Daily Times said that Shamshan Gath for the cremation of Hindu community was not available in Peshawar while there were only two Shamshan Gath in Kohat and Mardan.

He further said that most of the temples (Mandir) of Hindu community were captivated by the people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and constructed different shopping malls and schools. He informed this scribe that there were only two Asamai Mandir for Hindu community in Asia as the one was in Kashmir and one was in Afghanistan, adding that the city tower Mandir in Kohat which has 700 years history were captivated by the people and were constructed a school on it.

He further said that government girl’s higher secondary school located in Peshawar Cantonment was also Mandir of Hindu community while Kali Bari Mandir which was also a historical religious place for Hindus but that was also captivated by the influential people.

He added that there were thousands of places of worship for the minorities in KP but most of them were illegally held in custody by influential persons, while the government was not taking any action to give Hindu community and other minorities their constitutional rights, adding that the constitution of Pakistan give rights to minority but the provincial government was neglecting minority community in the province.

He further added that thousands of minority community persons were displaced from FATA and most of their historical religious places were demolished and they were still not constructed by the government. He added that minority community was attributing huge amount in the Pakistan exchequer but despite the annual budget for them is Rs 60 million only while the government announced Rs 200 million for transgender community.

Sarab Diyal added that the governments were announcing commission for the minority community but no representative from the community and the government has to give equal representation to minority. He informed that after the independence of Pakistan there were 33 per cent minority community in Pakistan but that were now decrease to 1.75 per cent, adding that the government were announcing youth and other policies but in that policies minorities were ignored.