ISLAMABAD - Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali ‘doesn’t think’ he has been sidelined, though he wants Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to directly monitor implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP), an official of interior ministry claimed.
The interior minister in the official meetings has refuted the impression that PM has reduced his role in NAP implementation by appointing National Security Adviser Lt-Gen (r) Nasir Khan Janjua the head of a new NAP implementation committee, the senior officer said.
Prime Minister's Office on August 15 announced formation of the new Implementation Committee for country's first-ever national plan on countering terrorism under the chair of NSA Janjua.
The decision was taken following the meetings of the top civilian and military leadership held soon after the Quetta tragedy, to effectively implement NAP. But this gave rise to speculations that Chaudhry Nisar was being sidelined.
The interior minister earlier had been made the focal person for implementation of NAP, which was announced in December 2014 after the terrorist attack on Army Public School in Peshawar.
Ch Nisar had suggested in a meeting chaired by Nawaz Sharif after the Quetta tragedy that the PM himself should oversee the NAP implementation, the officer said.
"Chaudhry Nisar personally enjoy very good relations with the national security adviser and has no objection to his appointment though," the official said.
He said the minister's view was that by putting all responsibility on Nasir Janjua would be like throwing him into a quagmire, and that NAP had been made a punching bag ignoring the fact that it was a shared responsibility.
“It is the interior ministry that has issued the notification of NAP implementation committee. If the minister had reservations over this committee, we would never issue the notification," he claimed, without telling if it was possible for a minister to ignore the directives of the prime minister.
Another senior officer of interior ministry said Nisar thinks that effective NAP implementation is possible only if the PM would himself chair monthly meetings on it in which chief ministers of all the four provinces should be invited besides top officials of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, Nacta and other relevant quarters.
Many points of NAP implementation are related to the provinces and it is only the prime minister who could do this job effectively. The idea was that monthly targets should be set with consensus and PM should see the progress at the end of every month, he said.
About a question of military top brass' reservations over non-implementation of NAP, the officer said that most of the points on which little progress has been made do not relate to the interior ministry - including Fata reforms, revamping and reforming the criminal justice system etc.
The army wants that there should be Fata (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) reforms when it is at the consolidation phase of operation Zarb-e-Azb. They think that in the absence of effective reforms militancy could return to these areas after troop withdrawal.
The official said there was delay in the finalisation of recommendations on Fata reforms as a number of committees failed to complete the task and now Adviser to PM Sartaj Aziz has recently finalised the report on it.
At a special security meeting at General Headquarters on August 12, Army Chief General Raheel Sharif had publicly showed his frustration over the government's poor progress on NAP and said the military's gains during Zarb-i-Azb were being lost.
The interior minister had told the National Assembly on August 16 that the newly constituted NAP implementation committee was merely an administrative body and both the interior ministry and the National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta) would continue to have an oversight role in the plan's implementation.
Nisar also heads at least 11 committees out of around 15 that the government had announced on December 27, 2014 for implementation of 20 points of NAP. An umbrella committee, headed by the PM himself, was also formed to supervise the overall implementation of the plan.