Kamal wants report on city’s population published

Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) chairman Mustafa Kamal has asked the chief justice of Pakistan again to take notice of the controversy over the 2017 population census results about Karachi.

Talking to media on Thursday before leaving for Hyderabad, he said the authorities should publish a report about the city’s population, which, he believed, was no less than 25 million. Kamal said PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari had claimed in his several interviews to media persons that Karachi’s population was no less than 30 million. He said that in 2013 the population was 21.3 million.

He referred to his petition filed with the Supreme Court on Wednesday over the population census, saying that he had no other political agenda than addressing public issues. He said injustice had been done to Sindh, but its chief minister did not care about it. “The PSP has already staged an 18-day sit-in over basic public issues and when our voices were not heard, we took out a rally in which we were subjected to torture,” he said, adding that he was still willing to take to the streets until the problems were resolved.

On the power crisis in Karachi, he said, “I had mentioned that it was an artificial crisis and it turned out to be.” He said it was a matter of one meeting only and when Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi visited Karachi and held talks with K-Electric and Sui Southern Gas Company, they got the issue resolved to a considerable extent.

About his visit to the second largest urban center in province, he said Hyderabad was a part of Sindh and should be taken into account when talking about the provision of basic amenities. Criticising the rival MQM-Pakistan, he said that when the PSP came to power, it would not cry foul over not having the powers to resolve public issues “because we know how to get the powers when we have the public mandate”.