HYDERABAD: Sindh’s Sen­ior Minister for Information, T­ra­n­s­­port and Mass Transit Sharjeel Inam Memon has accused the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) of pursuing naked anti-PPP politics, dismissing their calls for a separate province as a politically motivated distraction from his party’s development agenda.

Speaking to journalists after offering Eidul Azha prayers at his Tandojam residence on Wednesday, the minister was categorical that Karachi would never be ceded to the federal government. “It is impossible to hand over Karachi to the federal government,” he said, describing the city as an integral part of Sindh that would remain so regardless of speculation circulating on social media.

The minister rubbished talk of 28th constitutional amendment as purely speculative, saying that neither the PPP nor the Sindh government had been consulted on the matter.

He said the clamour over a separate province had been deliberately stirred following the inauguration of Shahrah-i-Bhutto by PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, and accused those behind it of being enemies of development. He said political parties in Karachi survived on little more than daily press conferences, and that the JI and MQM-P built their entire politics around anti-PPP slogans — parties, he noted pointedly, that had themselves fled local government elections.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2026