MQM-P announces new provinces movement, caravan march on November 29

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) has announced a movement to press for the creation of new provinces across the country, and said it will hold a caravan march toward Shahrah-e-Faisal on 29 November, according to Express News.

Party chairman Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui made the announcement at a general workers' meeting at the KMC ground in PIB Colony. He said the need for new provinces is greatest in the urban areas of Sindh.

Siddiqui said that when the caravan sets out, all routes leading to Shahrah-e-Faisal will be blocked. He also said the next gathering will take further decisions on the movement.

Referring to past events, Siddiqui said the killings of Muhajirs in Hyderabad on 30 September 1986, along with the Sohrab Goth and Qasba Ali Garh incidents, had not stopped the movement. Participants raised their hands in support of his demand for new provinces across the country.

Siddiqui also said: "ہمیں ایسی جمہوریت کی ضرورت نہیں جس کے ثمرات عام عوام تک نہ پہنچیں". In English, the remark means that the country does not need a democracy whose benefits do not reach ordinary people.

Senior MQM leader Farooq Sattar said the Eighteenth Amendment has not raised Pakistan's growth rate. He said the Pakistan Peoples Party has destroyed Sindh over the past 18 years, and that administrative units should be created across all four provinces. He said they should be formed on administrative grounds, not on language or ethnicity.

Another senior leader, Waseem Akhtar, said the meeting was only of District East workers and that the whole of Karachi was not yet present.