WPC TO ORGANISE PEACE FESTIVALS IN FIVE INDIAN CITIES

August 3, 2004 - (The Daily Times) The World Punjabi Congress (WPC) will hold peace festivals in the Indian cities of Haryana, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Lucknow between November 2004 and March 2005, the WPC’s steering committee has decided.

The WPC will also hold the 11th World Punjabi Conference in Delhi at the end of October and organise an international Urdu and mushaira meeting in Lucknow.

Around 500 delegates from Pakistan are to participate in the peace festivals, including intellectuals, writers, poets, artists, painters, journalists, educationists, doctors, technocrats, bureaucrats, agriculturists, film and TV personalities, lawyers, businessmen and traders, minority representatives, student representatives, women and representatives of NGO’s.

The WPC’s steering committee nominated and reconfirmed Tahira Mazhar, Sharif Kuniahi and Munir Niazi as senior vice chairpersons, and Ahmad Bashir, Hayat A Khan, Hameed Akhtar, Zafar Iqbal. and AG Josh as vice presidents.
Tariq Khurshid will be the advisor to WPC Chairman Fakhar Zaman. Afzal Ahsan Randhawa will be president of the Pakistan chapter of the WPC with Afzal Shahid as general secretary.

The WPC has also decided to establish 20 wings. Afzal Tauseef, Farkhanda Lodhi, Hussain Majrooh and Neelama Durrani will be the conveners of the writers’ wing; Sumera Awan and Akhtar Awan will head the lawyers’ wing; Shujaat Hashmi and Zareen Suleman will head the culture wing; Ghulam Mohyuddin, Bahar, Saleem Pasha and Tufail Akhtar will supervise the film wing; Prof Cedric Arial will be in charge of the minority wing; Aziz Mazhar, Jalilur Rehman, Mian Habib, Sarfaraz Syed, Imtiaz Rashed and Hussain Shah will look after the journalists’ wing; Mohammed Shahbaz will supervise the student wing; Saeedullah Chaudhry and Zahera Iqbal will be in charge of the bureaucratic wing; Porf Dr Ajaz Anwar and Nasreen Anjum Bhatti will be in charge of the fine arts wing; Afzaal Shahid and Azaz Azar will supervise the electronic media wing; Parveen Atif and Bushra Ejaz will head the women’s wing; Mian Iqbal Farid and Haji Asif will supervise the traders and business wing; Ahmed Saleem and Prof Abbas Mirza will look after the research wing; Agha Amir Hussain will supervise the publishing wing; Salman Chaudhry will be in charge of the agriculture wing; Afzaal Malik will head of the technocrat wing; Zaman Khan will be in charge of the NGOs’ wing; Dr Khalid Jan will head the doctors’ wing; and Qazi Javed and Khalid Mahmood will supervise the translation wing.

The WPC will nominate presidents of the 34 district chapters soon. It will also start membership drive on August 1.

The WPC has published a book containing the proceedings of the Lahore Conference in 2001.

From: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_1-8-2004_pg7_16