Qamar Zaman Kaira, the Prime Minister’s Advisor for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan, stated on Wednesday that “except for the removal of some anomalies in the AJK Constitution,” there were no plans to revoke the financial, administrative, or any other powers already granted to the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government.
“More than any other party in the nation, the Peoples Party and I have a special link with Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir. We are the ones who established constitutions and rights and who have made corrections to their flaws.
At a press conference held at the Central Press Club, Mr. Kaira stated, “We believe in regressing responsibilities and not centralising them.Three AJK legislators of his party, including the opposition party’s leader Chaudhry Latif Akbar, and numerous other party members stood on either side of him.
When Mr. Kaira is asked to clarify his stance on a proposed 15th amendment to the constitution by his ministry, he said that he did not see why such a fuss had been made over the matter.He stated that the document was created during the respective PTI and PML-N administrations in Islamabad and Muzaffarabad.
The laws and the constitution are living laws and should continue to undergo revisions in accordance with the needs of the time and place, he said. “I have only thrown it open in order to collect proposals from the players to resolve inconsistencies in the [AJK] Constitution,” he said.
However, when Mr. Kaira was questioned about the document later during a casual conversation in the club president’s office, he replied that because he hadn’t read it completely, he couldn’t instantly give an accurate assessment of it.
