KARACHI: Seeing a ‘big conspiracy’ behind recently announced ‘surprisingly poor’ results of students of Karachi in matriculation and intermediate exams, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) on Wednesday called it ‘an organised move’ to keep the youngsters of urban areas of Sindh behind in education sector as compared to the students in rural parts of the province where the success rate in the same exams remained more than 80 per cent.

The party vowed that ‘it would not give up’ and would take the matter to its logical end and would raise its voice at all relevant forums.

“Some 400,000 students appeared in Karachi in matric exams and 45 per cent of them were declared failed,” said senior MQM-P leader Dr Farooq Sattar while addressing a press conference at the party headquarters called Pakistan House on Wednesday.

“Then there were intermediate exams [in Karachi] where 65 per cent of students were declared failed. We wonder what’s happing. Have the students of Karachi given up their studies? Or have they become so dumb and incompetent that they can’t even pass a regular exam? Then we look at the results of rural Sindh. More than 80 per cent of students not only passed their exams, but majority of them succeeded with flying colours. This exposes a whole plan and conspiracy,” Dr Sattar claimed.

Sattar says over 80pc students in other Sindh cities passed exams with flying colours when majority of Karachi students were declared failed

He said the party had held several rounds of meetings with senior officials of the two boards to raise the issue, but the efforts remained ‘ineffective’ and ‘indecisive’.

The MQM-P leader said the two boards had ‘failed’ to justify their actions and satisfy the party leadership which was left with no option but to step up its struggle and expand the protest plan.

The senior leader warned that the MQM-P would exercise all legal rights and finally would lay a ‘siege’ to the headquarters of the two educational boards in the city — the Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BSEK) and the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK) to seek justice for students.

“Over the last 15 years, the Sindh rulers with a feudal mindset had tried to deprive Karachi youngsters of their bright future by snatching opportunities from them, mainly jobs in public sector organisations, however, they failed to take away their competence, intelligence and skills required for progressing ahead,” he said.

“After failing to achieve their target in this particular area, they appointed their blue-eyed boys in educational boards with a single agenda to cut short the number of Karachi students in the higher education,” Dr Sattar claimed.

“So they have now started executing their plan. They have failed a large number of students. And those who have passed their exams, were not given good grades to pursue higher education at reputed institutions. This was done in order to disappoint them [students] so that they give up their studies.”

The MQM-P leader, however, warned, that the party would not let this ‘conspiracy’ to succeed and expose the nexus behind the ‘corrupt officials of the boards’ and feudal rulers of Sindh.

“It’s an educational massacre of students of Karachi. We held multiple meetings with the officials of boards but none of them had any satisfactory reply to our concerns. We have seen students and their parents crying for justice,” he said, adding: “We want justice for our youngsters and their future. If we aren’t heard and these issues aren’t fixed, we will expand our protest that would culminate into a siege of both martic and intermediate boards.”

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2024