Increase in Karachi seats would have hurt PPP politically, says PSP

Pak Sarzameen Party leaders said on Sunday the party will go to any length to get the due rights of the people of Karachi.

“If the Karachiites continue to remain silent over the approval of the controversial census results, the situation will get worse,” said PSP chief Syed Mustafa Kamal while speaking at a meeting of his party’s Karachi division.

He said the Pakistan Peoples Party-led Sindh government, dominated by feudal lords, had remained a silent spectator because it was cognizant that an increase in Karachi’s seats would hurt them politically.

“By showing a low population of Karachi, the lack of development works of the provincial government in Karachi is being justified,” he said. With the accurate census of Karachi, Kamal said, not only would the suppressed people of Sindh get rid of the feudal lords, but an economic revolution would also take place.

“An accurate census will also increase the income of Sindh and Pakistan from development works in Karachi. The whole of Pakistan will benefit from the economic developments,” he said.

The “hollow slogans” of the Pakistan Tehree-e-Insaf and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan had been exposed to the people. “On the one hand, the PTI government extended the unjust quota system for an indefinite period, and now on the other hand, it has taken hostile action against Karachi by principally approving the controversial census without taking into account the legitimate demands and reservations expressed by PSP and Karachi residents.”

Kamal said the MQM-Pakistan with the seven seats in the National Assembly could have prevented the federal government from making cruel decisions, but it stabbed the people of Karachi in the back.

He said the inaccurate census would only benefit anti-national elements and all patriotic Pakistanis would suffer the consequences.

PSP President Anis Kaim Khani, and other members of the Central Executive Committee and the National Council also attended the meeting held at the Pakistan House.

What PPP says

On December 23 last year, the PPP had rejected the federal cabinet’s decision to approve the results of the Sixth National Census 2017, saying that it was unfortunate that the cabinet had opted to bypass an agreement of the parliamentary leaders of the Senate for correcting the highly controversial census results through a recount in five per cent randomly selected population blocks.

“The agreement of the parliamentary leaders, which also bears the signatures of Senator Azam Swati on behalf of the PTI, had made possible the passage of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows use of the provisional Census 2017 figures for delimitation of constituencies only for the general elections of 2017 and the by-elections thereof,” said a member Core Committee of the PPP, Taj Haider, in a statement.

He said that the above figures were not valid for any other election at any level or for the distribution of resources between the provinces. He said the deliberately created flaw in the method, used for the Census 2017, was its count on de jure method, which did not count migrants from other provinces in the population of the province, where they were presently living.

He said this mistaken method was not applied, while counting the population of Islamabad, where more than 90 per cent of citizens were migrants from other provinces. However, he said this major flaw in the counting methodology had greatly reduced the population of all districts of the province of Sindh.

“Unfortunately, the MQM was speaking only about Karachi districts and the GDA, another coalition partner of the selected government, had supported this gross injustice with the province of Sindh,” he said.