Nisar blames Sindh govt for Sehwan blast

islamabad — Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar on Saturday said that he is not in the habit of criticising other members of the government, but had to break his silence after the federal government was criticised for the lack of security at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine, reports Dawn online.

“Was security at the shrine the federal government’s responsibility, or was it provincial’s’? I asked, after our department was blamed for the lapse,” he said, narrating the incident.

“At the briefing after the Sehwan blast, I had to raise the question and ask them why there was not enough security to begin with. Why were the walk-through gates not working, and why was the power supply cut at the shrine? They had no answers to these questions,” he added.

Talking about lapses on provincial governments’ part, due to which several terrorist bids were allegedly not foiled in time, Nisar said: “There have been numerous times that our department has had intelligence about certain attacks and we informed the provincial governments to take measures to prevent those attacks, but they did not act on our tips.”

“When those attacks that we had told them about were carried out, they shamelessly raised fingers at the interior ministry for not doing its job,” he added.

Nonetheless, Nisar added that: “I have lived by two personal rules during my term as the Interior Minister: To not take credit for any win that comes our way, rather, share it with all departments; and to not criticise anyone for any lapses.”

“The law and order situation in the country has improved a lot in the past three and a half years. Before our time, there used to be multiple bomb blasts in the country each day,” Nisar said. “A blast not taking place was bigger news than those daily blasts,” he added.