Our Staff Reporter
MIRPUR (AJK)
Rousing reception awaits Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif on his arrival in Muzaffarabad on a daylong visit on Thursday (today), informed an official source on Wednesday. Brisk preparations are underway to accord a warm reception to the Prime Minister on his visit to the AJK capital city as the entire city is being decorated with banners and portraits.
During the visit, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will inaugurate newly built Domeil-Naluchi Bridge to provide an alternate route to the present much-traffic-jammed Domel-Secretariat-City road. The total cost of this project could not be known immediately, but its completion period span over 12 years, the source told this correspondent. As Chairman of the Azad Jammu & Kashmir Council, the Prime Minister of Pakistan will also preside over the budget session of the Council besides addressing the joint session of both houses of the AJK Parliament - the AJK Legislative Assembly and the AJK Council, the sources indicated. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif may also review progress on the under construction 969 MW Neelum-Jhelum hydro project, scheduled to be completed by mid of 2016 to pre-empt Indian construction of Kishanganga hydro station at Kunjarvara in upper Neelum Valley.
India, it may be added, wants to divert River Neelum/Kishanga’s water via this project to the Wullar Lake/Jhelum River on their side of the LoC in occupied Kashmir. Observers believe that the region-wise, it seems an important visit by the Prime Minister of Pakistan against the backdrop of Bhartia Janata Party (BJP)’s headlong plunge to incorporate special Article 370 that determines separate status of Kashmir in its manifesto, a pure Hinduistic approach special to this Indian party.
The visit of the Prime Minister will be a great breakthrough in uncovering the cruelties of the Indian forces being inflicted upon the Kashmiris in the Indian occupied Kashmir.
The government of Pakistan has already approved AJK public welfare projects worth amounting to Rs45 billion part of its annual budget.
The observers are further of the view that the visit of Nawaz Sharif to AJK will, indeed, prove to be strong source of inspiration and strength for the Kashmiris indigenous struggle for freedom for the achievement of their legitimate right to self-determination.