12 more workers of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), Bashir Qureshi group, announced on Thursday they will be quitting nationalist politics.

While speaking to local journalists in Tando Bago, Badin, Manzoor Ahmed, Mukhtiar Ahmed, Maqsud Ahmed Samoon and other members of JSQM's Tando Bago unit said that they had been "exploited" by their leaders, who they accused of being involved in extortion and amassing immense fortunes for themselves.

They requested fellow activists to shun nationalist politics and the struggle for Sindhudesh and vow to instead focus on their businesses and studies while leading their lives as "patriotic individuals".

Scores of Sindhi nationalist leaders and workers belonging to various factions of JSQM and Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaaz (JSMM) have quit nationalist politics in the past few weeks in the wake of an ongoing crackdown.

A close aide to the late G.M. Syed, Ustad Mohammad Rahimoon, who served as the convener of the banned JSMM was among the first to publicly announce his decision to do quit nationalist politics after being kept in detention for several months before his release a few weeks ago.

Nationalist activists from Matli, Talhar and other towns are also likely to make similar announcements soon, sources say.

The Jeay Sindh movement was begun by Ghulam Murtaza Shah Syed, better known as G. M. Syed, in the '70s.

Syed, who had been among the strongest proponents of the idea of Pakistan before its creation, was jailed after demanding that Sindh be separated from Pakistan.

After his death, however, the movement divided into multiple factions led by various leaders, including Bashir Khan Qureshi, Qadir Magsi, Abdul Wahid Arisar and Jalal Mahmood Shah, among others.

JSQM leader Bashir Qureshi died in April 2012 under mysterious circumstances, after which his young son, Sannan Qureshi, took the party's reigns. Bashir had led thousands in a rally in Karachi on March 23, 2012, only two weeks before his death.