Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah asserted on Thursday that his government would employ all possible options to challenge the “unilateral decision” taken by the federal government regarding the 2017 census.
The CM, who was addressing a Sindh Assembly session, reiterated his reservations on the census, in which, he maintained, the population of Sindh had been undercounted.
The session opened with Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani warning treasury and opposition members against creating the ruckus witnessed in the assembly the previous day. The warning followed a briefing by the CM on his government’s stance on the 2017 census.
Read: SHC gives CCI four weeks to issue notification of census results
He decried that the federal government had approved the census despite the Sindh government’s reservations.
Reiterating the reservations, he said. “Sindh population has been shown around 22 per cent less than the actual number. The population of Sindh is 60 million, not 47 million, as shown in the census.” He said it was not just Sindh, but Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa had expressed reservations on the census as well.
“Though a parliamentary committee was constituted to review the situation after we aired our reservations, but all in vain,” he said, adding that the Sindh government would employ all possible options to challenge the federal government’s “unilateral decision.”
Proscribed party
Besides, even with the federal government having banned the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), its lawmakers attended the Sindh Assembly session for the second consecutive day on Thursday.
Lawmaker Sarwat Fatima of the TLP, who was elected on a reserved seat for women, criticised the Centre’s decision to ban her party.
“We fail to understand why our party has been banned. What is our fault? Is it a mistake to raise the issue of blasphemous sketches of Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)?” she questioned.
Instantly after the MPA raised the questions, Durrani asked the assembly staff to switch off her microphone.
Read more: CCI sets aside Sindh’s objections, approves census results
The move led to another TLP MPA, Younus Soomro, who was elected from Lyari, echoed Fatima’s views, demanding from the federal government to lift the ban on his party. However, his microphone, too, was switched off soon.
TLP lawmakers in the Sindh Assembly had cried foul during the session the previous day, condemning the action against their party members over Lahore riots.
The riots led to the arrests of TLP members after they attacked policemen in the capital city of Punjab.
It was amid this pandemonium, chaos and violence that the federal government formally announced a ban on the TLP.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 23rd, 2021.
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