Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) chairman Mustafa Kamal said on Tuesday they had already rejected the provisional result of the population census 2017 for Karachi and would resist attempts to consider them final until its figures were put right.
Speaking at a press conference at the PSP headquarters, he said that in all developed countries such results were audited before being considered legit. But it was on the contrary in Pakistan, he added, referring to a report that said the Statistics Bureau of Pakistan had sent a summary to Prime Minister Imran Khan, seeking approval for the controversial result which showed the city’s population to be around 16 million.
“Even Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari had a few days ago raised this issue on the assembly floor, stating that the population was no less than 30 million.”
He remarked that if the results were accepted without conducting an audit, it would be an injustice with the people of Sindh, for they would be undercounted. He seconded Zardari, saying the acceptance of the controversial census results would amount to snatching from the people their right to a fair share in resources and opportunities and that no package would suffice to meet their needs.
Kamal asked the prime minister to take notice of it and urged Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, who is also the federal minister for information technology and telecommunication, and Senator Farogh Naseem, the federal minister for law and justice, to pursue the case in defence of the people of the city.
He criticised the MQM-P leaders, saying they were quite boisterous on this issue before the General Election 2018, but after that they had assumed a silence. He said the people had given their mandate to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the MQM-P, so they were supposed to advocate for them.
Speaking of the Supreme Court-ordered anti-encroachment drive in the city, the PSP leader said the matter should be handled with care as it involved the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of families. He asked the chief justice of Pakistan to look closely into it, and apprehended that authorities may let the encroachers come again after taking bribes.
He also touched upon the persisting water crisis and said it was not far when people would kill one another over a gallon of water as it was becoming a rare commodity. He said the water that was supposed to run through taps was being stolen by an organised mafia, and the tanker available for Rs5,000 today would not be available even at a price 10 times higher.