HYDERABAD: Sindh Taraqqi-Pasand Party (STP) on Sunday announced that it would organise a march on Oct 26 and a public meeting on Nov 3 in Karachi against Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) move for a division of Sindh.

Speaking at a gathering of party leaders, local businessmen and traders, former government servants and other people at his party’s office here, STP chairman Dr Qadir Magsi said that the Oct 26 march would be peaceful as it was aimed at restoring harmony among speakers of different languages.

He said Urdu-speaking people would also take part in the march titled Karachi Sindh aahay (Karachi is Sindh). The Nov 3 public meeting, to be held at Fawwara Chowk, would tell the world that all those living in Sindh considered this province their motherland. The participants, he added, would resolve to foil any conspiracy hatched against Sindh.

He said that the bill being tabled in the National Assembly by the MQM-P would be rejected with people’s power and political struggle.

The STP chief said his party would not leave any space for lingual politics in Sindh as it believed that those doing politics of caste, creed, race and tribe were in fact working against Sindh’s unity.

Dr Magsi was of the view that terrorism on the part of [Altaf Hussain-led MQM] hit the Urdu-speaking community more than Sindhis, and recalled that Urdu speakers were killed for not obeying any of Altaf’s decrees under the slogan Jo quaid ka ghaddaar hay, wo maut ka haqdaar hay.

He believed that the conspiracy hatched against Sindh was conceived at international level and cautioned that it was not against Sindh alone but the entire country targeting its integrity.

Expressing his displeasure over Prime Minister Imran Khan’s statement describing MQM-P leaders civilised and innocent, Dr Magsi said no one had the right to tinker with boundaries of any federating unit. “Sindh is an ideological region which had joined Pakistan in the wake of the 1940 Resolution. It’s one of the country’s federating units,” he said, and added that the PM was morally bound to get MQM-P’s bill rejected.

Dr Abdul Hameed Memon, Gulzar Soomro, Hoat Khan Gadhi, Qadir Channa and others also spoke.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2019