Naimat Khan
KARACHI: Chief of Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) Dr Farooq Sattar, while rejecting the “rigged census”, said that injustice to Karachi was tantamount to injustice with entire Pakistan.
“This is not an issue of the MQM but all ethnicities living in different cities of Pakistan,” he said. “Karachiites are being treated as Red Indians and third-class citizens in their own country,” the MQM-P chief further said.
Addressing news conference at Karachi Press Club on Tuesday, he said all the reservations that MQM-Pakistan expressed while the census exercise was going on have been proven correct.
The population of Sindh’s urban centers is deliberately manipulated with to minimize their headcount, said Sattar. “We are being given the message that we are third-class citizens of the country we created.”
Sattar asked if Sindh’s urban centers are not part of the country. “This time, we have not been pushed to the wall,” he said. “We have now been immured into the wall.”
According to Sattar, a new series of exploitation of Sindh’s urban population has begun. He said that all the previous censuses were as discriminatory towards Karachi and other urban centers of Pakistan as this one. “It was perhaps the census of 1951 that is the only fair one,” he said. “Since then, the urban population of Sindh is deliberately manipulated with.”
A day earlier, while strongly rejecting the provisional census results, the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Monday announced to hold an All Parties’ Conference on the issue of census, which, it alleges, has been manipulated by the central government of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
This announcement was made by President Pakistan People’s Party, Sindh Nisar Ahmed Khuhro here at Sindh Assembly. This reaction from Khuhro, who is also senior Sindh Minister, came after the bureau of statistics issued more provisional results – this time with cities’ breakup – showing that from 1998 to 2017, Lahore’s population has grown by roughly at a rate double that of Karachi.
While issuing policy statement of the Sindh Government and ruling party of the province, Khuhro directly accused the federal government for showing less population of Sindh under a planned conspiracy.
“This has been done in order to reduce the share of Sindh province in national finance award,” Khuhro opined. The PPP Sindh chief said his party had serious reservations, which turned out to be true. “We have decided to convene an all-party conference for which we have started contacting different political cliques,” he said, adding that PPP will not leave its right to anyone else. Soon after the PML-N government released provincial results of the census on Saturday different political parties voiced their reservations about the statistics.
Those who expressed their reservations included the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM-London), MQM Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami, Karachi and Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP).
According to statistics board, Pakistan’s population has surged to over 207 million, with an average annual growth rate of 2.4 percent from calendar year 1998 as recorded in recently concluded sixth housing and population census.
According to provisional summary results of the census which were presented in the Council of Common Interests (CCI) on Friday, this population number included 132,189,531 rural and 75,584,989 urban population, showing an overall population growth at 57 percent during the period of 1998-2017. The updated figure — an increase of around 57 percent since 1998 — is higher than the estimate of 200 million that had been in wide use.
While commenting on the results, the PPP MPA Senator Saeed Ghani questioned how can be 52 per cent population of Sindh in cities. He said Punjab is the most urbanized province. “It seems that the figures are wrong,” he said.
The MQM Senator Tahir Mashhadi and MNA Saman Jafri also raised similar questions, saying that census 2017 figures are “manipulated” and a “chunk” of data on Karachi is missing. “It is obvious that census figures have been manipulated by vested interests in Sindh. Wrong figures have very adverse effects,” said Mashhadi.
