Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Communication Abdul Hakeem Baloch tendered his resignation on Thursday.

He sent the resignation to the Prime Minister house with an explanation that he had met the PM on 29 April and had expressed his concerns regarding the problems of his constituency and the his authority as a minister. He said that since those concerns were not addressed, he had resigned.

Abdul Hakeem had also tendered his resignation last year but withdrew it after the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) leader Captain Safdar assured him that his concerns would be looked into. There were rumors that he had developed some differences with PML-N but he never confirmed them. However, he had made a statement earlier and said that he was ashamed of not carrying out development projects in his constituency. “It is because I have no funds and no powers,” he said.

Abdul Hakeem was elected on a PML-N ticket from the NA-258 after defeating Raja Abdul Razzaq of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and local tribal chieftain Jam Abdul Karim. He was the only PML-N candidate who won a National Assembly seat from the Sindh province on the party ticket.

He was appointed as State Minister for Railway and in the presence of powerful Federal Minister for Railway Khawaja Saad Rafique he had been serving as a dummy state minister. It was only after he complained and protested that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made him the State Minister for Communication in June last year. Sources have learnt that real powers were never given to him. He was not consulted on the appointment of Shahid Ashraf Tarar as secretary of the communication ministry and chairman of the National Highway Authority and Tarar literally refused to follow Baloch’s orders leaving him frustrated.

“As a mark of protest, a frustrated Baloch has not been sitting in the ministry office for several months,” said an official in the ministry in Islamabad on Wednesday. He said Baloch also boycotted the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Karachi-Lahore motorway in March this year near his constituency in Karachi, in which Sharif participated. A prominent social activist from District Malir Gul Hassan Kalmati Said that Abdul Hakeem felt he had been let down by the party’s central leadership.

Considering the local bodies’ elections to be held on September 20, he is under much pressure to form an electoral alliance in District Municipal Corporation Malir and Karachi District Council according to the local analysts. Recently he had also formed a socio-political alliance Karachi Indigenous Rights Movement for safeguarding the rights of rural areas of the city, especially Malir. Sources have also learnt that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders have been trying to convince him and his colleagues to join the party ahead of the local bodies’ polls.