HYDERABAD RALLY: Supporters raise party flags at the rally. PHOTO: EXPRESS
KARACHI:
Escalating its campaign against the Sindh government, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) has called for the creation of new provinces across the country, particularly in Sindh, declaring that it will now take its struggle from parliament to the streets after exhausting constitutional and democratic avenues.
Addressing a press conference at the party’s Bahadurabad headquarters, senior MQM-P leader and Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal said the existing administrative system had “completely failed”, making the creation of new provinces on administrative grounds inevitable.
He claimed that of the Rs22 trillion received by the Sindh government over the past 18 years, Karachi was allocated only Rs680 billion – less than three per cent – despite contributing more than 90 per cent of the province’s revenue.
Kamal said that before 2010, Karachi directly received one-sixth of the General Sales Tax (GST) collected by the federation. Had that formula remained in place, he claimed, the city would have received Rs2 trillion by now.
Meanwhile, Convener and Federal Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui renewed his party’s demand for a fresh population census and the creation of a separate province, alleging that the 2023 headcount undercounted urban Sindh and deprived the party of its electoral mandate.
Addressing a rally at Koh-e-Noor Chowk, Siddiqui claimed that the 2023 census omitted nearly half of urban Sindh’s population, resulting in the loss of voter rights and the party’s mandate. “I request the rulers and warn them as well that a new census should be conducted,” he said.
He contended that urban Sindh accounted for 65% of the province’s population, but said the census figures did not reflect that. He also claimed that Karachi financially sustained Pakistan, alleging that while one segment of the city’s population generated 97% of Sindh’s tax revenue, another segment that “contributed nothing” controlled and utilised the provincial budget – an apparent reference to Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) legislators elected from rural Sindh.
Sindh Culture Minister Zulfiqar Shah rejected Siddiqui’s remarks, saying Urdu-speaking people had long ago rejected MQM-P’s “politics of ethnic divide”. “The problem between Khalid Maqbool and Mustafa Kamal is the consequence of promoting politics of hatred,” he said, adding that the party’s popularity had declined to the point where it could not even win union councils in local government elections.
