Islamabad, (Parliament Times) : Prime Minister Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan has said that the government was going to fulfill the promise of holding local body elections despite strong opposition by major political parties.
He expressed these views while holding an emergency press conference in Islamabad today.” The people of Azad Kashmir were blackmailed by previous governments for 32 years in the name of local government elections but we did not compromise”, the PM said adding that for him values mattered more than the power. “We won’t hesitate even if we had to sacrifice our power to give people their basic democratic rights”, he said.
” Opposition parties including People’s Party and PML-N tried to escape from the municipal elections but they miserably failed”, the PM said adding that the people would hold them accountable for their anti people policies by defeating them in the upcoming elections. “It is not the AJK government but someone else is failing to take security from the federal government”, he said.
Terming Pakistan as part of his faith, the PM said adding that a few people want to spoil our relations with the state of Pakistan, but they would fail. He said that there was still time for a rethink and providing the requisite security so that the elections could be held in Azad Kashmir in a single day.Referring to Party Chairman’s growing popularity the AJK PM said,” Imran Khan Malik is the most popular leader and the nation stands with his narrative”. Voicing his concern over the growing unemployment in the state, he said that the unemployment in the state was at the highest level. In order to meet this challenge, he said that tax reforms were being introduced to provide jobs to educated youth and reduce unemployment. Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan said that the number of tax filers has increased from 7 thousand to more than 33 thousand.
He said that the government was not in favor of taking taxes by suppressing the citizens, but efforts were being made to give the citizens confidence and bring them into the tax net. “The IT sector, livestock, dairy and poultry sector are being made tax-free”, he added. Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan said data related to cybercrime has been collected and action will be taken against them at any time.