Opposition parties, including the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), have rejected the provisional census results.
PPP and MQM had already announced protest rallies against the ‘rigged’ census.
Similarly, PSP leader Advocate Anees, while talking to reporters on Tuesday, said that the results of the census are discriminatory towards Karachi, which is not acceptable. He said there is a certain group in the country that doesn’t want equal distribution of resources.
The PSP leader said that the Supreme Court (SC) will be contacted in this regard while rallies and seminars will also be held after Eid.
‘INJUSTICE’ WITH SINDH:
Similarly, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)-Pakistan leader Farooq Sattar said on Tuesday that the provisional census results intentionally showed a decrease in Sindh’s urban population.
“Like every census, the sixth exercise too asks us to ‘adjust’ and ‘accommodate’ the results,” lamented Sattar at a press conference in Karachi.
The MQM leader feared that Karachi and Hyderabad will not be given their due share in local development funds as a result of the census.
“We can in no circumstances accept these initial results,” he said, adding that injustice with Karachi is injustice with Pakistan.
“This is not an issue of the MQM but concerns all residents of Sindh’s urban areas,” he argued.
“Census commissioner Asif Bajwa has done injustice to us. Mohajir’s and Sindh’s urbanites are not being pushed against the wall but pinned to the wall,” he said further.
Moreover, the MQM leader said the party will take out a rally on September 10 in this regard.
On Sunday, Sattar had announced to lead a protest rally in 72 hours against the provisional census results.
Speaking in the party’s general workers’ convention at PIB Colony football ground, Sattar said by understating the population of Karachi census results have done injustice to all ethnic communities living in the metropolis.
Similarly, on Monday, the Sindh government announced that it would reject the provisional results of the sixth population census.
The provisional results of the census released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) showed that Karachi’s total population is 14.91 million, a 62 per cent increase from the 1998 figure of 9.339 million. In comparison, Lahore’s population went up by a whopping 116 per cent.
