Fireworks in PA session over demand of new province in Sindh

KARACHI: Fireworks were witnessed during the session of Sindh Assembly on Monday as the opposition and treasury legislators verbally clashed on the demand for creating a new province comprising urban parts of Sindh.

The demand for a new province after carving out urban parts of Sindh was reiterated by Opposition legislators of the Muttahida Quami Movement. The lawmakers belonging to the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party bitterly opposed the demand while expressing their firm resolve that each of the inhabitants of Sindh would prefer to lay down their lives than to let their native land be divided. Legislator of Opposition MQM Khawaja Izharul Hassan said the Constitution of 1973 contained the provision and prescribed the method for creating new provinces.

The MQM legislator said he would continue to raise the demand for creation of a new province in Sindh due to unabated discrimination being meted out to people of the urban parts of Sindh. He demanded that the Sindh government should launch a thorough third-party performance audit of various civic agencies of Karachi including Karachi Development Authority, Malir Development Authority, and Lyari Development Authority to check working of these organizations. He said the Sindh government should better devolve control of these civic agencies to the Mayor of Karachi for their better functioning as it has failed to run them efficiently. He said like the demand of the provinces for a new NFC award, Sindh should also announce provincial finance commission award for transferring fiscal resources from the provincial exchequer to the districts for their development.

The Parliamentary party leader of MQM, Kanwar Naveed Jameel, said his party would withdraw from its demand of creating the province if all the injustices and instances of bad governance against the people of Karachi were undone by PPP’s Sindh government. He said the PPP’s rule in the province has ignored the development of urban areas of Sindh in the last decade compelling their dwellers to demand a new province.

Jameel said the revenue collected from Karachi has the maximum share in the taxes, collected at the national level as compared to any other city in the country, which should be spent on the development of its infrastructure.

Sindh Education and Culture Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah said irrespective of the provisions of the Constitution the people of Sindh would not allow division of their native land come what may and they would put up fierce resistance against the idea. PPP’s legislator Mir Nadir Ali Khan Magsi said the people of Sindh would lay down their lives to oppose division of their motherland. Sindh Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani said the urban and rural divide in the province needs to be bridged instead of demanding a new province after carving out urban parts of Sindh. He said the MQM's demand for new province is in continuation of the past policies of Muttahida, which stood for sowing seeds of hatred and division among the dwellers of the urban areas.

He said the MQM should shun its policies of promoting violence, hated on the basis of ethnicity and language which are no more acceptable or have an appeal to the people of Karachi. The LG minister said they would not allow the division of Sindh and would utilise every constitutional and legal mean including public protest and agitation to oppose the new province. He said apart from MQM, other Opposition political parties in the province would also oppose the demand for the new province on basis of urban-rural divide. Ghani said the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation instead of demanding more financial resources from Sindh must enhance its own revenue collection that has been dismal so far.