KARACHI: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on Sunday celebrated its 40th foundation day by organising a convention of its office-bearers in the metropolis.

Speaking at the programme held at the PIB Stadium, MQM-P convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui vowed to replicate the party`s `Karachi model` across Pakistan to bring people belonging to middle and lower middle classes into politics and send them to parliament.

`It was the MQM which sent the educated, middle and lower middle classpeople fromKarachi and other Sindh cities to parlia-ment first time in the history of Pakistan when it had launched its struggle as the Mohajir Q aumi Movement in 1984,` he said.

`In 1984, a bunch of Karachi`s educated youth had launched the struggle for a dream country where everyone gets their rights.

It`s quite unfortunate that that dream has yet to be materialised but it`s also a historic fact that the same struggle helped middle and lower middle class of the society to become part of the parliament. Now we`re doing the same struggle for people from Kashmir to Balochistan so that no one can steal their basic rights,` he said.

He, however, admitted that though the party objective wasn`t achieved yet, he and hisworkers hadn`t given up and made several successes during the course of their four-decadelong struggle.

Dr Siddiqui said only the democratic and political struggle could achieve that target. The MQM-P enjoyed the strength and capacity that it could stop any political party having feudal leadership from exploiting rights of farmers, labourers and poor segment of society, he said.

He claimed that it was the MQM-P which pushed the authoritiestocarry outthe population census within a short span of five years since the population count of 2017 had serious flaws.

He said that his party made efforts to get maximum number of people counted in the digitalcensus. `Millions of Karachi would not have counted if we did not raise our voice,` he said.

The MQM-P leader accused a `certain mindset` of always undermining the significance of Karachi. He said that some people didn`t want the city`s population to be shown accurately for their vested interests and the same trend prevailed whenever the results of census in the past were finalised.

He paid tribute to the party`s leadership at grassroots level and its workers who had offered sacrifices during the past 40 years without demanding any return.

Senior leaders Dr Farooq Sattar, Mustafa Kamal, Anis Kaimkhani and others were also present.