THATTA: Awami Tehreek took its campaign against what it calls a conspiracy to divide Sindh onto the streets of Makli on Friday, holding a public awareness rally that also targeted land occupation, corporate farming and new canal schemes, including the Jalalpur Canal.
The march was led by Central Senior Vice President Noor Ahmed Katiyar alongside other party leaders. It began at Dubai Shopping Centre and moved through the town’s main markets and side streets, with workers handing leaflets to shopkeepers and passers-by along the route.
Addressing participants, the leaders alleged that the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the establishment were “on the same page” in a design to divide the province. They further claimed that land-grabbing colonies, including the proposed Zulfiqarabad, formed part of a wider plan to occupy Sindh’s coastal belt.
The speakers also accused the sitting government of enforcing what they described as an undeclared ban on peaceful protest, calling the current environment more oppressive than earlier martial law periods.
Party leaders vowed to widen what they termed a peaceful, democratic struggle across Sindh in the coming weeks. “Sindh’s lands, water, and resources belong to its people, and we will not accept any occupation,” they declared.
The choice of venue carries weight. Makli, adjoining Thatta town, sits at the edge of the district that anchors Sindh’s coastal belt — the same stretch of deltaic land that has been at the centre of successive disputes over reclamation projects, coastal housing schemes and freshwater flows below Kotri. Rallies here are aimed as much at the delta’s fishing and farming communities as at the provincial capital.
Friday’s rally revives grievances that dominated Sindh’s politics through 2025. The Council of Common Interests on April 28, 2025 rolled back the plan for new canals on the Indus, reversing an ECNEC approval dated February 7 and stating that no new canals would be constructed without mutual understanding and consensus among the provinces. Fact-checkers have since noted, however, that the scheme was paused rather than formally cancelled, and the matter returned to the table when the Prime Minister convened a meeting on the canals in January 2026. That unresolved status is what nationalist parties are now mobilising around.
Awami Tehreek indicated that the Makli leafleting drive is one leg of a district-by-district awareness campaign rather than a standalone event. For the local administration, the immediate question is how such processions are managed at a time when organisers say permissions for public gatherings are being withheld — a claim that is likely to shape the next phase of the movement across Thatta, Sujawal and Badin.
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