KARACHI: Expressing a deep distrust of the district administration under the Sindh government tasked with conducting the census 2023, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on Sunday called for extension in the deadline of the post-enumeration survey and demanded that it be conducted by a ‘third party’.

Addressing a press conference at a park close to the temporary headquarters of the party in Bahadurabad, MQM-P leaders held the Sindh government of the Pakistan Peoples Party responsible for the ‘flawed census’ accusing the ruling party of ‘deliberately manipulating’ the numbers of urban centres in Sindh.

“Amid ongoing political crisis in the country, the date of post-enumeration survey has passed,” said senior party leader Syed Mustafa Kamal. “We have recently held a meeting with Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal. We demanded extension in the date of this survey. Also we want that a third party should carry out this survey as the officials of the Sindh government who carried out the flawed enumeration exercise cannot be trusted for this work.”

Majority of districts in Sindh had witnessed population growth up to 30 per cent while in Karachi and Hyderabad this figure couldn’t even touch 25 per cent mark, he said. The two major cities of the province had hardly registered 20 per cent increase in their population, he added.

“In the first week of April when the population count was going on we came to know that 98 per cent of Sindh had already been counted and Karachi population at that time stood at 13.3 million,” said Mr Kamal. “Since then we held 55 meetings with federal minister and all concerned institutions. It was due to our consistent effort that 5.6 million more people in Karachi were counted by the end of the deadline. It’s still not enough.”

He said the recent appeal of the Sindh government to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for help in water supply projects was actually an admission of its failure of the past 15 years of its governance.

Dr Farooq Sattar elaborated as to how a fair and true population count of Karachi would lead to increase in the city representation in parliament and called it a ‘real fear of anti-Karachi forces’.

“If the people are counted in true terms it would automatically increase the share of parliamentary seats from the city,” he said. “And naturally, the chief minister of Sindh would be from Karachi which they never want. It’s an undeclared agreement among them that Karachi population should not grow more than 30 per cent. They want to keep Karachi as a colony of Sindh. This is a typical feudal mindset.”

The MQM leader pointed out some basic ‘flaws’ in the whole design of the national census and regretted that despite several appeals the concerned authorities failed to take notice of loopholes identified by the party.

He also questioned the calculation under which Karachi was distributed in 16,000 blocks for the population count.

“We only demand a fair count, it doesn’t mean to count only Mohajirs living in Karachi,” Dr Sattar said. “Every single person regardless of his or her ethnic, religious or political background living in Karachi should be counted as a Karachiite. Don’t make it a political thing. It’s purely a human issue and every sane voice will agree with our demand.”

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2023