KARACHI: A day before the maiden visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan to Karachi after becoming the country’s chief executive, the Mustafa Kamal-led Pak Sarzameen Party appealed to him on Saturday to declare the result of the sixth population census of Karachi and Hyderabad null and void and order a fresh census in the two urban centres of Sindh.
Mr Khan is due in Karachi on a daylong visit on Sunday (today) primarily to keep the tradition of visiting the mausoleum of the father of the nation, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to pay homage as the new PM.
Mr Kamal has been raising the issue of the results of the census under which the population of Karachi is shown at a mere 16 million.
“The biggest gift by Prime Minister Imran Khan for the people of Karachi and Hyderabad will be the addition of seven million ‘missing’ people in the population count,” said Mr Kamal in a statement issued on the eve of Mr Khan’s visit to the provincial metropolis.
He said any development package for Karachi and Hyderabad would not serve its true purpose without ascertaining the real population of the two cities.
He said that the people of Karachi and Hyderabad pinned hope on him that he would take action to resolve this important issue.
MQM-P delegation to meet PM today
A six-member delegation of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan will meet PM Khan during his first visit to Karachi on Sunday, said an MQM-P spokesman on Saturday.
The MQM-P is one of the coalition partners of the Mr Khan-led federal government.
The spokesman said that the delegation would be led by party convener and Federal Minister Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui and comprising Amir Khan, Faisal Subzwari, Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar, Kanwar Naveed Jameel and Federal Law Minister Farogh Nasim.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leader Shamim Naqvi along with Haleem Adil Shaikh visited the MQM-P temporary headquarters in Bahadurabad and thanked the party leadership for supporting his nomination as the new leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly.
Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2018
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