MQM-P says it will not accept ‘incorrect’ census

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) on Thursday expressed severe reservations about the census in Karachi, asserting that the population of the city had been grossly understated.

Addressing a press conference at the MQM-P Bahadurabad office, senior deputy convener of the party Mustafa Kamal said they would not accept a flawed census.

“We say that everyone should be counted correctly,” he said, adding that MQM-P delegations had met the prime minister five times on the census issue.

“We do not believe in this fake counting and we will use every democratic right to protest against all these injustices,” Kamal remarked.

He said the provincial government had failed to give water or collect garbage from the urban areas of the province. “The provincial minister of education says the university in Hyderabad will be built on his dead body.”

The MQM-P leader alleged that when the MQM-P demanded that the census be extended in Karachi and Hyderabad, Bilawal Bhutto wrote a letter to the federal government demanding that the census be extended in the entire province, after which the provincial administration forcibly increased the population of rural Sindh.

He said the census was extended in the rural areas of the province although complaints regarding enumeration had only been reported from urban Sindh.

MQM-P Senior Deputy Convener Dr Farooq Sattar said if the entire census process was conducted under the provincial government of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), there could be no transparency.

He said the population of Hyderabad, Sukkur and Nawabshah cities had decreased but that of other divisions of Sindh had increased by 30 to 40 per cent compared to the 10 per cent growth in urban districts.

Karachi JI Emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has demanded that the government and Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) delay the next phase for the formation of the local government in Karachi because of the ongoing crackdown against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) — a key player in the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) City Council and potential coalition partner of the JI in the local government.

In a statement, he said the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) knew it very well that talks between the JI and PTI were pacing up for a coalition government in the KMC. He added that the crackdown had also been intensified against the PTI and against this backdrop, the announcement for the next phase for the formation of the local government would not be appropriate.

He remarked that it was the government and ECP’s obligation to ensure that all the UC chairmen and vice chairmen participated in the elections for the city mayor and town chairmen respectively.

Rehman also reiterated his demand to extend the date for the census till the enumeration process was completed, and each and every resident of Karachi was counted. He held the federal government, PPP government in Sindh and ECP responsible for understating the population of Karachi.

He said fraud in the name of digital census would not be accepted and all the available legal, democratic and constitutional options would be utilised against injustice to Karachi and Karachiites.

He said the JI had already cleared in the Islamabad meeting that it did not merely want an extension in the census date as its basic demand was to count the residents of Karachi in full.

He maintained that the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics had failed to keep its promise to count every individual living in Karachi.

Talking about the deteriorating law and order in the megacity, he demanded that the authorities take solid measures in this regard. He also demanded that the government recruit locals in the Karachi police and purge the department of black sheep.

The JI leader also took up the issue of renewal of the K-Electric’s licence and demanded that the authorities not impose what he called a corrupt company on Karachi for another term.