Delimitations violative of SC verdict: MQMP to reject LG poll results if demands not fulfilled, says Khalid Maqbool

KARACHI: The delimitations carried out by the Sindh government for the Local Government election are against the apex court decision, said Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui while addressing a presser at the party’s head office in Bahadurabad on Friday.

“If our legitimate demand were not fulfilled, we will not accept the results of the LG polls. The SC judgment of 2014 ordered that the execution of delimitations comes under the jurisdiction of the Election Commission of Pakistan,” he said and added Karachi and Hyderabad were divided into constituencies on the basis of ethnicity. He said that on the one hand, the PPP formed UCs where only 20,000 people live and on the other, the areas where the MQM-P’s vote bank was dominant has over 90,000 people for each UC. The motive behind these delimitations was to snatch the city’s mandate. It also shows pre-election rigging, Siddiqui charged.

“The MQM-Pakistan does not want a single-day delay in holding any elections. We, however, approached the court to conduct clean and transparent elections,” said Siddiqui, adding that in all previous censuses the population of Karachi was always shown as less than the actual population of the city. Our petition regarding the census is pending in the Supreme Court”. “Today I am again demanding the Chief Justice and the state to conduct a transparent census and count every single person of the Urdu-speaking community. Without proper and transparent counting of Urdu-speaking, democracy can’t be termed genuine”. He said that our objections which the SC considered valid and asked the MQM-P to go to the High Court. “If our legitimate demands were not fulfilled, we will not accept the results of the August 28 LG elections”. The MQMP convener said that the provincial government rigged the voter lists as it has more power than its mandate. “Sindh has been under a single government for the past 14 years. But the government has failed to govern urban areas of the provinces. Today, Karachi is in a state of destruction. Where should the people of Karachi go and to whom should they file a complaint,” he asked.

Siddiqui said that after the by-poll at the NA-245 constituency, the MQM-P would take feedback from people to decide on a further course of action. However, currently, a majority of the MQMP Coordination Committee members think that the political ground should not be left empty for anyone. This is why MQMP is contesting the LG elections.

Meanwhile, members of the MQMP Coordination Committee expressed concern over the worsening situation in Hyderabad following the recent rains. In a statement, they said the rainfall has exposed the Sindh government’s tall claims. People in Hyderabad were suffering from agony due to stagnant rainwater and muck. But the provincial government was engaged in conspiracies to occupy the citizens of Sindh.

The committee members said that the government is punishing Hyderabad for rejecting the Pakistan People’s Party every time. Rain-affected urban areas should be declared disaster areas and the people who suffered losses should be compensated.