MQM-P asks centre, army chief, CJP to help get 'reasonable' funds for Karachi's uplift.

KARACHI -- Rejecting the provincial budget for financial year 2020-21, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan has asked the federal government, the army chief and the chief justice of Pakistan to play their role in allocation of 'reasonable' funds for the development of Karachi.

'The MQM-P rejects the budget 2020-21 as the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party continues with its discriminatory policy against urban areas by ignoring their development like it did in the past 12 years,' said senior MQM-P leader Kanwar Naveed Jameel.

Speaking at a press conference here at the party's temporary headquarters in Bahadurabad, Mr Jameel, the parliamentary party head of the MQM-P in the Sindh Assembly, said the PPP's 'traditional' policy of dividing Sindh on the basis of rural and urban areas was not only harmful for the unity of Sindh, but also for the solidarity of Pakistan.

Accompanied by other party leaders, he said Karachi contributed 90 per cent of the total revenue of Sindh and according to official figures Rs1,771 billion tax had been collected only from the urban areas of the metropolis. The federal government had given Rs4,975.10bn from the federal divisible pool to the Sindh government, he added.

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'The Sindh government collected Rs16,481bn from Karachi during the past 12 years and it had spent a paltry sum of maximum Rs150bn on the development and progress of the country's commercial capital,' he said, adding that these figures were 'evidence' that the PPP-led government had deliberately been victimising the people of Karachi and other urban areas for over a decade.

The MQM leader said that in the next fiscal year 2020-21 Karachi would contribute Rs1,175bn to the exchequer of Sindh, whereas it would get only Rs26.43bn. 'The Sindh government has not given one single development project for Karachi in the next fiscal year,' he said.

He said around Rs232bn was allocated for development projects in 2020-21 and the share of Karachi was just Rs26.04bn, or 11 per...