LAHORE: After four years of hectic efforts by Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), All India Radio handed over recordings of two key speeches by Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to Pakistan yesterday.
The PBC plans to broadcast the two speeches — delivered on June 3, 1947 and on August 11 the same year — next week. The speeches have been handed over to Pakistan High Commission in India and would be sent to PBC Islamabad in due course.
Sources in Radio Pakistan said PBC had been in correspondence with All India Radio for the last four years to get all the recorded speeches of the Quaid-e-Azam, adding that Indian authorities had provided recordings of two speeches to the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi as the “first instalment”.
The sources said the Indian authorities had agreed to provide other recorded material related to the Quaid-e-Azam to
Pakistan.
Sources said the recorded speeches would reach Islamabad in two to three days and they would be sent to all stations of Radio Pakistan next week.
Sources also confirmed that Radio Pakistan had started making arrangements to broadcast the Quaid’s speeches.
They said initially the quality and authenticity of the speeches would be checked and then they would be broadcast, “as both the speeches were highly important with regard to foundation of Pakistan”.
The Quaid’s June 3, 1947 speech was in reaction to a British plan to hold a referendum in the erstwhile North West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) to know whether the area should be merged into Pakistan or India.
The other speech was delivered by Jinnah in the first assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, in which the founder of Pakistan declared the country a secular state.
Internews
