KARACHI: The Mutta­hida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on Saturday announced that it would launch a struggle for getting an ‘Urban Sindh’ province to end ‘injustices’ meted out to the people of urban areas, particularly Mohajirs, in all spheres of life.

The demand was made at a public meeting held by the MQM-P here at the Bagh-i-Jinnah near the Quaid-i-Azam’s mausoleum through a resolution read out by senior party leader Kanwar Naveed Jameel.

The party wanted to demonstrate its street power by holding a public meeting at the sprawling venue where the then unified MQM led by its founder Altaf Hussain had already made history by holding a women-only rally in 2012.

Judging from the party’s past performance, Saturday’s show was a disappointment al­though a good number of people, including women and children, came to the venue from different parts of the city.

Siddiqui terms PPP’s govt in Sindh racist

Speaking on the occasion, MQM-P convener and federal minister Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui strongly criticised the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and said that its ‘racist government’ had passed a resolution against the MQM in the Sindh Assembly without considering the fact that the province was actually divided into two parts in ’70s when it imposed an urban-rural quota system.

He asked why not the PPP brought a resolution against those who introduced that quota system in Sindh.

Senior party leader Amir Khan said that the MQM-P was not against the provincial autonomy but it was not going to accept provincial hegemony which only caused destruction in Karachi and urban Sindh. “People of Karachi will not become slaves of Larkana,” he declared.

He said that the current Sindh government was an incompetent set-up. “People of Sindh have to rid themselves of feudals and landlords,” he said.

He said that the country was divided into four provinces with a dictatorial decision of Gen Yahya Khan.

Earlier, Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar, Nasreen Jalil, Faisal Subzwari, Khwaja Izharul Hasan and other MQM-P leaders also spoke.

Participants of the public meeting replied in the affirmative when Kanwar Naveed Jameel presented 11 resolutions.

One of the resolutions said that the MQM-P believed that a struggle for creation of an Urban Sindh province should be initiated to end injustices meted out to the people of urban areas, particularly Mohajirs, in all spheres of life.

Accusing what it called the “biased, racist and anti-Karachi” PPP government of providing jobs to non-deserving people on fake domiciles and permanent residence certificates, the MQM-P demanded setting up of a judicial commission that could investigate all recruitments made during the tenure of PPP government.

It also demanded that the provincial government spend 50 per cent of the taxes collected from Karachi on urban areas of the province.

The party demanded that all the civic functions that had been snatched by the PPP-led provincial government be given back to the Karachi Metropolitan Corpor­ation. It warned the K-Electric to stop loadshedding.

The MQM-P demanded that the killers of slain party leader Ali Raza Abidi be arrested forthwith.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2019