PM Shehbaz directs to address MQM-P reservations on census

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday directed to address the reservations of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) — a key ally of the incumbent government — involving the first-ever digital population census at the earliest — after reports surfaced that the party had asked its lawmakers to hand in their resignations.

The premier issued the directives during a meeting with a delegation of the MQM-P led by its convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui.

Last month, the MQM-P — which has a strong stand over the matter — rejected the census being conducted by the Sindh government employees —after the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) chief statistician Dr Naeem Uz Zafar said that "it is not necessary that Karachi's population will show as 30 million" after the census.

Addressing a press conference, MQM-P senior leader Farooq Sattar expressed fears that a plan had been devised to show less population than the actual headcount of urban areas of Sindh. The MQM-P leader had also demanded a fresh census conducted by an impartial and private sector company.

The prime minister, during the meeting, directed Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal to address the reservations of the allied party.

The MQM-P delegation thanked the prime minister for playing his role to address the party’s reservations to a great extent.

Former Karachi mayor Mustafa Kamal, Farooq Sattar, Federal Information Technology and Telecom Minister Syed Aminul Haq and MNA Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui were also present in the meeting.

Earlier, a multi-party conference (MPC) convened by the Pakistan Peoples Party — a key ruling party —had resolved not to accept the results of the ongoing 7th digital census in the country if the reservations of Sindh were not addressed by the federal authorities in March.

Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Karachi chapter Emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman on April 22 had also warned that the results of the ongoing census will be rejected if the people of Karachi are not fully counted.

He remarked that according to some media reports, the census was showing an inverse growth in the population of Karachi. He asserted that the people of Karachi would not accept any more deception in the name of digital census.