MQM-P steps up 'new province' push

KARACHI: Picking up the pace in its anti-Sindh government campaign, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) has announced that it would launch a movement for the creation of new provinces in the country, especially in Sindh, and that it would now fight its battles on the streets instead of relying on constitutional and democratic means anymore.

While speaking in a press conference held at the party’s Bahadurabad office, a senior MQM-P leader and Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal said that the present administrative system had “completely failed” and therefore new provinces were bound to emerge for administrative reasons.

According to Kamal, out of Rs22 trillion earned by the Sindh government in the last 18 years, Rs680 billion was spent on Karachi, which is just below three per cent of the total allocation despite the fact that the city contributes more than 90 percent to the provincial exchequer.

Kamal maintained that until 2010, Karachi got one-sixth of the money earned through General Sales Tax (GST). If that was continued, Kamal said, then Karachi would have already got Rs2 trillion.

At the same time, Convener and Federal Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui reiterated the demands of his party for conducting a new population census and forming a new province, saying the 2023 headcount had excluded the urban population of Sindh and thus the electoral mandate of his party.

Addressing a rally at Koh-e-Noor Chowk, Siddiqui alleged that in 2023, the census had omitted almost half the population of urban Sindh, causing their voters' rights to be denied and their mandate to be robbed. "I request the rulers and warn them too that a new census must be carried out," he stated.

He argued that urban Sindh formed 65 percent of the population of the entire province of Sindh, but the population census figures did not show that. He further said that Karachi was responsible for keeping Pakistan afloat, adding that while there was one portion of population of the city which earned 97 percent of Sindh's tax revenue, the other "did nothing" but controlled and used the budget of the province.

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.