Bilawal slams MQM-P over its ‘silence’

Pakistan Peoples Party Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari censured on Tuesday the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), which forms the coalition government in the Centre with the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, for remaining silent on what he dubbed violations of the rights of the people of Sindh by the federal government on multiple fronts.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of a 4.9-kilometre-long road, extending from Fishermen Chowrangi to Ibrahim Hyderi, he remarked.

“I am surprised that the so-called owners of Karachi, [comprising] the MQM-P, continue to be a part of a federal government that has launched anti-Karachi policies.”

He hit out at the PTI and MQM-P for imposing “a controversial census”, conducted in 2017, on Sindh, particularly slamming the latter over its “mysterious silence” on the matter. Bilawal said that with an authentic census, the people of Sindh would get their rights under the National Finance Commission award and more employment opportunities in federal government departments.

“But the MQM-P remains silent,” he decried.

Contentious count

The 2017 census - held 19 years after the last one - was carried out in two phases between March 15 and May 24, 2017 at a total cost of Rs21 billion. After the initial demographic data was published, smaller provinces, specifically Sindh, had expressed serious reservations.

However, the Sindh government had accepted the initial results on the condition of a five per cent audit. Incidentally, the MQM-P and PSP both had expressed serious reservations over the statistics on Karachi and had also rejected the census. They had also demanded the scrutiny of five per cent of census results.

With respect to Karachi, Sindh-based political parties had raised objections on provisional results, maintaining that the city’s population was more than 20 million people while the census showed it at 14.9m people.

They had further pointed out that the provisional results of the sixth population census showed that in the past 19 years, there was a 60 per cent increase in Karachi’s population, compared with a 116 per cent increase in Lahore’s population, which rose to 11.126m people by 2017. Later, new constituencies of the national and provincial assemblies were demarcated based on the initial results, which formed the basis of the 2018 general elections.

Eventually, three years after the census was conducted, the Centre approved it in December last year, with the MQM-P, one of the allies of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the Centre, submitting a dissenting note.

Twin islands

Also slamming the MQM-P in connection with the Pakistan Islands Development Authority (PIDA) Ordinance, 2020, Bilawal stated, “The islands of our fishermen have been taken away by the federal government and yet, the MQM-P remains silent.”

He went on, “The federal government has usurped the financial rights of the people of the province [of Sindh], but the MQM-P is silent.”

And, he added, the federal government has refused to contribute to the development of Karachi, which generates 60 per cent of the national revenue, but the MQM-P is silent.

“The [PTI] is in power in the Centre because of the MQM-P’s votes, which it bagged from Karachi, but the MQM-P fails to do justice to the people of the city,” he said.

Then, again turning his attention to the PIDA Ordinance, 2020, he maintained that the fishermen couldn’t be barred from sailing to the islands of Bhandar and Dingi. In this regard, he also told Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah to talk to the relevant departments and instruct them to not “harass” the fishermen - the real owners of the islands.

Drawing his address to a close, Bilawal appreciated the Sindh government for initiating development endeavours in Karachi and expressed hope that such initiatives would transform Karachi into one of the most beautiful cities of the world.

The Sindh CM, Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani, Sindh Information Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, Sindh Women Development Minister Shehla Raza, Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab, Karachi administrator Laeeq Ahmed and Karachi commissioner Navid Shaikh, among others, attended the ceremony.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6^th, 2021.