Hafiz asks Pak govt not to buy electricity from India

Pakistan should not buy electricity from India, Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed has told the government, days after prime minister Nawaz Sharif directed his power minister to visit India to address the severe energy crisis facing the country.

‘India is producing electricity on Pakistani rivers and offering the same to us to buy. Don’t our rulers understand this basic point?’ Saeed, the mastermind of 2008 Mumbai attacks, asked while addressing an ‘Ummat Conference’ at Sheikhupura, some 40 kilometres from here.

Saeed, who is carrying a $10 million bounty on his head declared by the US, has been freely moving and conducting his activities mostly in Punjab, a province of 90 million. ‘There is no need to beg India..,’ Saeed, the former head of banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, added. His warning to the Sharif government came in the wake of its proposed plan to buy electricity from India and China to cope with the current energy crisis.

Finance minister Ishaq Dar had said India is ready to sell up to 2000 MW electricity to Pakistan and ‘we are seriously pondering to purchase electricity from India.’ Sharif had told members of the Pak-India joint business council last week he had directed Khawaja Muhammad Asif, minister for water and power, to visit India and explore potential areas of cooperation between the two countries.