Daily Times

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-Pakistan) senior leader Farooq Sattar said on Tuesday that his party was being compelled to announce a campaign for a south Sindh province.

The MQM-P leader was addressing a press conference at PIB Colony.

Sattar said that the chronic shortfall of water in the port city needed to addressed, adding that all basic problems of the people must be dealt without any political influence.

Sattar said it was a victory for the party’s voters that both factions were contesting the election on the symbol of kite.

“I congratulate all members of MQM-P that we have been allotted our customary election symbol kite,” said Sattar, who later announced a campaign for a south Sindh province. He said the province was required on administrative basis.

“We are going to take part in the upcoming election and yet some forces are unwilling to accept us as a political reality,” he said, adding that it was in front of the public how the MQM was targeted.

While speaking on the census, he said that the census wasn’t carried out in the right manner and his party faced discrimination even before the elections, “There was a lack of fairness in the census so that elections could be manipulated in favour of specific units and languages, I, therefore, demand that a separate province be made in south Sindh. There should not just be two, but 100s of administrative units. We are ready to struggle for that.”

He said that there was complete consensus in the MQM ranks over the issue of a separate province in Sindh. Sattar said that the MQM’s mandate was being given to others. “We are not being ‘minused’, we have been ‘minused’,” he said.

Regarding the tussle between PIB and Bahadrabad factions, Sattar said he had extended a hand of friendship to Bahadrabad faction and that was why the two groups were able to hold a jalsa to prove to their detractors that the muhajjir community was united in its state of deprivation.

Sattar said that like other parties, the MQM-Pakistan must be allowed to engage in politics in accordance with the country’s constitution. He said the party’s offices that had been sealed must be re-opened immediately. Otherwise, he said, the MQM-P reserved the right to boycott the upcoming election. “We will continue our struggle until injustices against us continues unaffected,” he said, adding that Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah and Peoples Party leader Khursheed Shah were used to giving malicious statements against the Urdu speaking community.

Sattar requested to ECP to take action against violation of rules in the delimitation process.

Separately, the MQM-P parliamentary party has proposed the name of Sheikh Aftab Ahmed as the caretaker Sindh CM.

Published in Daily Times, May 31^st 2018.