KARACHI, April 6: Activists of the Pakistan People’s Party staged a protest demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club on Wednesday to express their opposition to the bifurcation of Hyderabad which, they alleged, was a conspiracy against Sindh and its people.

Addressing the rally, which lasted over two hours, PPP leaders condemned the arrest of MPA Ghulam Qadir Chandio, and warned the government to mend its ways by April 16, when Asif Zardari was returning home, or face a countrywide campaign.

Amid a charged atmosphere, PPP Sindh chief Syed Qaim Ali Shah warned the government of the far-reaching negative consequences, of the bifurcation of Hyderabad into four entities, on the integrity of Sindh and the federation.

He slammed the government for pursuing divisive policies and strengthening centrifugal tendencies, accusing it of taking decisions to the advantage of a major stake-holder in the ruling coalition.

At a time when people of Sindh were joining hands against the anti-Sindh projects like Kalabagh Dam and the Greater Thal Canal, and also against the denial of provinces’ adequate share in resources, the government had once again acted against the interests of Sindh by fragmenting the second largest city of the province where people of different language had been lived together peacefully for decades, he said.

“The situation is deliberately being vitiated by the rulers,” he alleged.

The party’s Central Executive Committee member N. D. Khan, cautioning the government against resorting to such divisive policies, declared that the PPP would not be deterred from confronting anti-people policies of the regime by such tactics. He said masses would accord a befitting welcome to Asif Ali Zardari on April 16.

Rashid Rabbani and Rafiq Engineer said that the chief minister would not escape the wrath of Sindh people for “hatching a conspiracy against them to the advantage of the major coalition partner which thrived on ethnicity.”

They alleged that the bifurcation of Hyderabad had been done on political and ethnic grounds. “If Hyderabad has been divided on the basis of its area, then Karachi is larger than it,” they argued, and asked: “Why Karachi was not bifurcated.”

Participants of the rally, raised slogans against bifurcation of the districts smaller than Karachi, rising graph of unemployment, breakdown of law and order and price hike.