KARACHI, Nov 13: City Nazim Naimatullah Khan has said that the city government would support the Sindh Madressatul Islam (SMI) in getting university status.

Speaking to SMI faculty and students on Thursday, he pledged that the city government would provide land for varsity campus, besides development funds, if required.

He was of the view that educational institutes like SMI, Aligarh and others, established in Indian subcontinent, helped create Pakistan.

Talking about the Pakistan movement, he said that Sindh and Bengal, as provinces, contributed a lot towards creation of Pakistan. “It (Sindh) was the only province in the subcontinent that first passed two resolutions in favour of Pakistan,” he said.

The city Nazim, deploring that the country could not be made a welfare Islamic state even after 56 years of its establishment, vowed, “Now I shall make Karachi Islamic and social welfare city.”

Highlighting the significance of education and city government’s concern for it, he said that 31 per cent of the first CDGK budget had been allocated for education, which he claimed was the biggest portion allocated for education by any provincial or district assembly in the country so far.

The Nazim lamented that the countries that achieved their independence along with Pakistan were now considered as developed, and said: “We have not provided even basic facilities to our people.”

Earlier, Muhammad Ali Shaikh, SMI Principal, in his welcome speech said that just after occupation of Sindh by the British, there was a problem of law and order; people were committing robberies and were involved in other criminal activities. Then the British authorities found solution of the problems in education through its commission, constituted for the purpose. Then, the enlightened Muslims of Sindh established SMI in Karachi.

Comparing the two institutions, he said Aligarh was established in 1875 as a school, was upgraded to the level of college in 1877, and then it got status of university in 1920, while SMI, which was established just 10 years after it in 1985, was upgraded up to the level of college in 1943, but this status was snatched soon. Then it again got the status in 1995, and now it needed varsity status.

He said Karachi Municipality gave the plot to SMI, where it existed now, free of cost. He reminded that SMI’s old student, Kazi Khuda Bux, was the first Muslim Mayor of Karachi Municipality. In addition to it, SMI’s old students like Hatim Alvi and Abdul Sattar Afghani, also served the municipality as its mayors on different times, he added.—PPI