“It is enough, now I cannot lead,” said Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain, exasperated over “the silence” that followed Khawaja Asif’s statement in the National Assembly.

“The whole assembly became a silent spectator when Khawaja Asif ridiculed us,” he complained to the media, announcing that he could no longer hold the reins of his party.

“Although two million Muslims migrated from India after partition in 1947, the defense minister had claimed in an interview that actual ‘mujahirs’ were only those who came from the Indian regions of Jalandhar and Ludhiana,” Hussain said, adding that people from minority Muslim provinces of UP, CP, Agra, Hyderabad Deccan and Lucknow also migrated to Pakistan after the partition.

The MQM’s London-based chief said that he had struggled for 37 years to unite the people who migrated from Muslim minority provinces in India but the defense minister “rejected the sacrifices” of immigrants from those provinces.

Tuesday morning, MQM’s Rabita Committee called an emergency meeting to discuss the future course of action following the remarks from the defense minister and the MQM chief’s announcement.

Later during a press conference, the MQM’s committee threatened to boycott Parliament’s proceedings if the defense minister did not “apologise to the 50-million-strong Muhajir community for hurting their sentiments”.

Rabita committee members Dr Farooq Sattar and Haider Abbas Rizvi demanded prime minister clears government and party policies on the matter. They also demanded Sharif to ask Asif to apologise for his behaviour.

MQM leader Sattar announced province-wide protests from Wednesday against defense minister’s “provocative and foul language against the two-nation theory”. The MQM leaders took offense of the fact that the minister used “fake muhajir” to address the protesters in the Parliament.