Afaq Ahmed denied that he had ever demanded the creation of a Mohajir province.

KARACHI: Mohajir Qaumi Movement (Haqiqi) chairman Afaq Ahmed on Tuesday again raised his voice for the creation of a new province comprising urban localities of Sindh, but said any administrative unit should not be created on an ethnic basis.

Though MQM-H politics revolves around the issues and problems of the Mohajirs, or Urdu-speaking people, he denied that he had ever demanded the creation of a Mohajir province.

“I have never talked about a Mohajir province…I had called for a southern Sindh province that should be based on urban areas of Sindh and I am still committed to it,” said the recently released MQM-H chief at a press conference held at his Landhi residence.

He said he was against the creation of an administrative unit on an ethnic basis and said that he had publicly opposed the decision of the then Pakistan People’s Party government to create Malir district in Karachi division.

Mr Ahmed criticised his rival Muttahida Qaumi Movement and its leader, Altaf Hussain, at the press conference and said the situation he was faced with after his release from prison was not unexpected for him.

He said he had requested the Sindh High Court to depute Rangers for his security as he also wanted that the paramilitary force kept a watch on his activities so that he could not be implicated in more false cases.

Declaring that he was not scared of anyone, he said it was the job of the government and local administration to provide protection to him and party workers.

“We still want to avoid confrontation, but I warn that do not push us to the wall as doing so would harm the city as well as the government,” he said.

He urged the government and the judiciary to review the situation and order better arrangements so that he could carry out his political activities freely and avoid any sort of clash.

He evaded a direct reply to a question about his health conditions and any plan to go abroad for treatment. “I am not here to escape,” he remarked.

However, he said Lord Nazir Ahmed and Habib Jan Baloch of the Friends of Lyari International had invited him to London and he told them that he would certainly go there after getting a respite from his pressing engagements here.

Answering a question, Mr Ahmed said he had been in contact with former home minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza and that he [Mirza] had clarified that he had not called all Mohajirs “hungry and without clothes” when they came to Pakistan after partition.

However, his stance on a southern Sindh province appears to be in direct contrast with Dr Mirza’s assertion who had said that no one had the guts to divide Sindh.

He alleged that Mr Hussain had demanded and got millions of rupees from intelligence agencies. “I was with him then and I am a witness to this although I asked him [Mr Hussain] not to do so,” he added.

Mr Ahmed said his party had never adopted a policy of confrontation, but the Muttahida chief had always tried to restrain the MQM-H from carrying out political activities.

Referring to the joint interrogation report of a suspected terrorist, Ajmal Pahari, he said the suspect had confessed to his involvement in a conspiracy to kill him in an attack on the party’s headquarters, Bait-ul-Hamza, which was later razed and a park built on its site.

He criticised the government for not even indicting the suspected terrorist in that case and said that the partisan policy of the government was the actual cause of lawlessness in Karachi.

Mr Ahmed said he would visit the mausoleum of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah on Dec 23 to pay homage and to resume his normal political activities.

In reply to another question, he said he would never think of joining any other group or to merge the MQM-H with another party.

He said that at a later stage he would work for bringing all those forces that wanted peace in the city at one forum for a complete de-weaponisation of Karachi.