MQM-P demands CJP take notice of 'unjust' Karachi's census

Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Convener Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Monday said that population of urban centers of Sindh particularly Karachi was shown lower than its actual number in the last census and described it a criminal act under the international laws.

Addressing a press conference, Siddiqui, who is also Federal Minister Information Technology, said that his party had raised the apprehensions on the exercise of the census even before its start and our reservations proved true after the results of the census were announced.

He said that MQM-P has already moved Supreme Court (SC) but our petition is yet to see the day of light and noted that astonishing results of the census surfaced. He pointed out that some of the blocks have shown zero population whereas the number of voters in these blocks ranged from 200 to 800 hundreds.

MQM leader said that we had revealed before the census Karachi is being deprived from its actual population through a well-orchestrated plan and ruled out that these were mere mistakes. "If these would have been mistaken, then the same should have happened in the others parts of the country", he opined.

Replying to question, Siddiqui said that we made our entry in the coalition government in center with the top demand for delimitation of transparent constituencies. He demanded Chief Justice of Pakistan to take notice of this issue to provide justice to the people of Karachi.

Aamir Khan, Senior Deputy Convener MQM-P said that Council of Common Interests (CCI) had decided that third party audit would be carried out for five blocks of Karachi and regretted that unfortunately the decision had not been implemented so far.

Deputy Convener of the party Kanwar Naveed Jameel told the media that Karachi was divided into 14,894 blocks for the consensus, out of which 1866 blocks were shown with the low population whereas number of voters in these blocks were higher than the heads counted in census.

He said that international institutions had provided financial assistance for this census and the malpractices in the census would dent the credibility of the country. He appealed to Chief Justice of Pakistan, Chief of Army Staff and the Chief Minsiter Sindh to take notice of this issue.