Former opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly and now MQM MPA Khawaja Izharul Hassan on Friday offered to tender his resignation as a lawmaker if the allegation was proven that the Muttahida Quami Movement had killed personnel of law-enforcement agencies in the city during the Karachi operation.
The MQM MPA said this while taking part in the general discussion in the Sindh Assembly on new provincial government’s budget for the remaining nine months of the current financial year 2018-19. The provincial assembly held a prolonged session till late Friday evening as budget debate continued for a fifth consecutive day.
Responding to the remarks made by MPA of the ruling PPP Sohail Anwar Siyal a day earlier, the MQM lawmaker said: “If you say to us that you are taking care of us then in response we could also inform you in what manner people here are being taken care of.”
Speaking in the house on Friday, Siyal while criticising the MQM had alleged that people in interior Sindh had looked after those who had migrated from India after Partition.
Hassan said that the migrants to Pakistan had rendered massive sacrifices for the cause of their new homeland and not just supporters and voters of MQM, but people in the entire country had been censuring the contemptuous remarks by the PPP MPA. He added that retaliation would naturally occur over the utterance of such inflammatory remarks in the house.
Hassan vehemently denied the allegation made by Siyal that MQM had killed personnel of law-enforcement agencies in the operation conducted in Karachi. “I challenge, I present my resignation here as you have to prove that MQM killed personnel of law-enforcement agencies in any area (of the city),” he said.
He alleged that personnel of LEAs definitely had come under attacks when they conducted operation against gang-war elements in areas of the city under the influence of PPP.
“I am proud of being a Mohajir as I didn’t come to Sindh, rather, I came to the Pakistan of the Quaid-e-Azam and you have to accept this fact that evacuee property and land in Sindh do belong to me. Nobody here should dare say to me that I migrated here to someone else’s land,” Hassan said.
Criticising the new Sindh government budget, Hassan said that it contained just a single new development scheme for Karachi. PPP had announced the launching of new transport schemes on inter-city and intra-city routes named after the party’s leadership, but these schemes were never materialised, he added.
He said the Sindh government had always vehemently pleaded its case regarding the non-constitution of the National Finance Commission but here in the province the similar fiscal situation had been quite dismal and so far not a single meeting of the provincial Finance Commission had been convened.
The opposition lawmaker added that Karachi had been without proper surveillance cameras despite a project to this effect had been launched by the provincial government in 2008, while every year billions of rupees were reserved in the budget for installing new surveillance cameras.
Hassan questioned how street crimes in Karachi had alarmingly increased all of a sudden. He alleged that some 150 children were being kidnapped annually as not more than 17 out of them could be recovered.
He said the provincial government had earlier announced the introduction of facility for lodging the FIR with police through electronic methods but still people had to wait for their turn for hours to lodge their case with the police.
Strong reaction
Meanwhile, it was learnt that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zadari had reportedly censured Siyal over his controversial remarks. The PPP chief reportedly said that the party would take disciplinary action on organisational basis if in future any lawmaker of the party uttered such contemptuous remarks on the floor of the assembly.
While talking to journalists on Friday at the Sindh Assembly building, Siyal said that he still stood by his remarks. He claimed he hadn’t uttered any statement against any Urdu-speaking person but in fact he had made the statement against a particular mindset. “I made my statement against the mindset, which till the present day makes the admission before India that they had committed a folly by creating Pakistan.”
Siyal said that he himself was a Mohajir so he could not utter any word against Mohajirs. He added that before his speech in the house on Friday, MQM’s lawmaker Muhammad Hussain had made quite a controversial speech which should also be listened to again to identify its provocative parts.