MQM-P rejects provincial census report, announces protest in 72 hours

KARACHI: Rejecting provincial census results, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Farooq Sattar on Sunday announced to lead a protest rally in 72 hours against it.

Addressing the party’s general workers’ convention at PIB Colony football ground, Sattar said that injustice have been done to all ethnic communities living in the metropolis by understating the population of Karachi.

“Karachi’s actual population is around 30 million but it has been reported to be 10.6 million,” he said while vowing to take out a rally in protest.

Adding, “MQM-P will take a rally from Mazar-e-Quaid to Statistics Division or Supreme Court’s Karachi registry.”

READ MORE: 132 million in 1998, Pakistan’s population now reaches 207.7 million: census report

Meanwhile, Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) senior and opposition leader of National Assembly Khursheed Shah has casted doubts on the provincial report of sixth housing and population census. “Records of the Statistics Division and the Pakistan Army should be compared,” he stressed.

“The facts will come out, once the two census records are compared,” he added.

It is worth mentioning here that the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics on Friday has presented a provisional census report showing the country’s current population at 207.7 million against 132 million that was estimated in the last census in 1998.

The census report was made public after the Council of Common Interest (CCI) meeting last week.