PAT announces Dec 30 as new date for all parties conference

LAHORE: Dr Tahirul Qadri led Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) on Saturday has announced December 30 as a new date for its All Parties Conference (APC), wherein the party chief would unveil future course of action after holding consultations with other political parties. 

The PAT chief had earlier called an APC on December 28 to deliberate on future plan of action against responsible of Model Town massacre in light of the incident report.

However, the PAT leadership rescheduled the date of conference, which will now be held on December 30.

Qadri has been demanding the immediate resignations from Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah and Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif for their alleged involvement in the incident.

Model Town tragedy or the Lahore massacre was a violent clash that ensued between the Punjab Police and Pakistan Awami Tehreek activists on 17 June 2014 resulting in the death of at least 14 people.

The standoff lasted for almost 11 hours when the police′s anti-encroachment squad launched an operation to remove the barriers from the road leading to the offices of Minhaj-ul-Quran and the residence of PAT founder Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri in Model Town, Lahore.

Despite having reservations on publicizing the report, the government made the report public on Dec 5 in compliance with the Lahore High Court (LHC) orders.

According to the probe report, Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif did not pass the “disengagement” order as he claimed before the judicial commission formed to launch an inquiry into the 2014 Model Town incident, the report made public by Punjab government says.

The report also maintained that the operation planned and designed under the then Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah “could have easily been avoided” and that the “police officers actively participated in the massacre”.

It further observed that: “The level of cooperation in digging out the truth is that no police official from top to bottom, whether actively participated in the operation or not, did utter a single word about the person under whose command the police resorted to firing upon the PAT workers.”