PPP to rule rural TMCs, JI, PTI to control majority of urban bodies

• Winners in polls for chairmen and vice chairmen elected unopposed.
• Karachi's 25 TMCs to be governed by PPP.
• PPP clinches 13 of 25 TMCs.

The 25 Town Municipal Corporations (TMCs) of Karachi will be ruled by the chairmen belonging to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The number of the TMCs where the PPP, JI and PTI chairmen have been elected are 13, 9 and 3 respectively.

In 16 of the TMCs, no elections for the chairmen and vice chairmen took place as the winners were elected unopposed. In the remaining nine TMCs, which include the Sohrab Goth, Chanesar, Safoora, Gulshan and Jinnah TMCs of District East, New Karachi TMC of District Central, Korangi TMC of District Korangi, and Orangi and Mominabad TMCs of District West, elections were held. The PPP won five of these nine TMCs, the JI three and the PTI one, which was by toss.

After winning Karachi’s mayoral position, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has clinched 13 of the total 25 Town Municipal Committees (TMCs). The party has managed to get both chairmen and vice chairmen in 12 of those 13 TMCs.

In the TMC Korangi, the PPP has got its chairman Muhammad Naeem elected with the help of an independent candidate, Muhammad Zareen, who was elected as the vice chairman.

The PPP has a complete domination in the Keamari and Malir districts where all the TMC chairmen and vice chairmen of the party were elected unopposed. The three TMCs of District Keamari to be ruled by the PPP chairmen include Baldia Town, Moriro Mirbahar and Mauripur.

The PPP’s chairman- and vice chairman-elect of the Baldia Town TMC are Abdul Kareem and Ajab Khan respectively. The elected chairman and vice chairman of the Moriro Mirbahar TMC are Ali Akbar and Shoukat respectively while the respective elected chairman and vice chairman of the Mauripur TMC are Humayun Muhammad Khan and Asif Kausar.

Similarly, all three TMCs of District Malir — Malir, Gadap Town and Ibrahim Hyderi — are to be ruled by the PPP’s elected representatives.

Jan Muhammad Baloch is the elected chairman and Syed Muzammil Shah is the vice chairman of the Malir TMC. Nazeer Ahmed and Muhammad Rafiq Dawood are the elected chairman and vice chairman of the Ibrahim Hyderi TMC. The Gadap TMC will be governed by Tariq Aziz as the chairman and Jam Muhammad Jokhio as the vice chairman.

The PPP also holds a majority in the District West TMCs where two of the three TMCs — Orangi and Manghopir — are ruled by its chairman and vice chairman. The party won the Manghopir TMC unopposed.

The Orangi TMC’s elected chairman and vice chairman are Muhammad Jamil Zia and Affan Sagheer Siddiqui respectively while the Manghopir TMC’s respective chairman and vice chairman are Nawaz Ali Brohi and Muhammad Arif.

In the third TMC of District West, Mominabad, the PPP could not get its chairman elected. However, the vice chairman-elect, Abdullah, who belongs to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam- Fazl, had contested the local government elections on the PPP’s electoral symbol due to a combined panel. He has now been declared as an independent vice chairman because, with the chairman belonging to the PTI, the law does not allow him to be associated with a party that is an opponent to the chairman’s party.

The PPP has also a strong presence in District East where its chairmen and vice chairmen have been elected in three of the five TMCs — Sohrab Goth, Chanesar and Safoora.

In the Sohrab Goth TMC, the PPP’s Abdul Raheem and Muhammad Imran have been elected as the chairman and vice chairman respectively. In the Chanesar TMC, Farhan Ghani is the chairman-elect and Muhammad Shahzad is the vice chairmen-elect. The Safoora TMC will be governed by Chairman Kaleemullah and vice chairman Abdul Haq.

Lyari — the traditional stronghold of the PPP that did not vote for it in the last general elections — has seemingly gone back to the party as the Lyari TMC, one of the two TMCs of District South, will be ruled by the PPP chairman, Abdul Nasir Baloch, and vice chairman, Muhammad Iqbal Hingoro, who have been elected unopposed.

The Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), which is the second largest party in the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation City Council, is also the second largest party in terms of the number of TMCs where its chairmen have been elected. The JI has been able to secure chairmanship in a total of nine TMCs and the vice chairmen of eight of them also belong to the JI.

In the Jinnah Town TMC of District East, the chairman-elect, Rizwan Abdus Sami, belongs to the JI and the vice chairman-elect, Hamid Nawaz Khan, belongs to the PTI. The JI was able to have both its chairman, Faraz Ahmed, and vice chairman, Syed Ibrahim Siddiqui, elected in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal TMC of District East.

The TMC setup of the entire District Central is going to be ruled by the JI’s chairmen and vice chairmen. The five TMCs included in District Central are Liaquatabad, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, Gulberg and New Karachi. The JI’s chairmen and vice chairmen were elected unopposed in four of them and the election was held only in the New Karachi TMC.

The chairman- and vice chairman-elect of the New Karachi TMC are Muhammad Yousuf and Shoaib respectively, North Nazimabad TMC Atif Ali Khan and Syed Ziauddin Ahmed respectively, Gulberg TMC Nusratullah and Muhammad Ilyas respectively, Liaquatabad TMC Faraz Haseeb and Mirza Muhammad Ishaq Taimuri respectively, and Nazimabad TMC Side Muhammad Muzzaffar and Muhammad Noman Siddiqui respectively.

The JI also has a strong presence in District Korangi where two of the four TMCs — Landhi and Model Colony — will have its chairmen and vice chairmen who were elected unopposed.

The Landhi TMC will be ruled by Chairman Abdul Jamil Khan and Vice Chairman Muhammad Imran while the Model Colony TMC will be governed by Chairman Zafar Ahmed and vice chairman Faisal Basit.

The PTI’s chairmen have been elected in only three TMCs, one each in the South, Korangi and West districts. The party managed to get both chairmen and vice chairmen elected unopposed in the Saddar TMC of District South and Shah Faisal TMC of District Korangi.

The PTI’s chairman-elect of the Saddar TMC is Mansoor Ahmed Sheikh and the vice chairman-elect is Muhammad Rehan. The elected chairman and vice chairman of the Shah Faisal TMC are Gohar Ali and Tariq Mehmood respectively.

An interesting election took place in the Mominabad TMC of District West where the two factions of the PTI contested for the chairmanship against each other. As both the candidates polled equal votes, the chairman was decided by the toss, in which the dissident group of the PTI lost and the faction that supported Hafiz Naeemur Rehman in the mayoral election won and had its chairman Malik Muhammad Arif Awan elected.

The demographics of the TMCs that will be ruled by the PPP and JI also suggest a deep rift within the city’s urban and properly planned areas that are mostly inhabited by the Urdu-speaking populace on one side and the rural and suburban areas as well as densely populated underprivileged areas on the other side.

The PPP holding sway in the Keamari, West and Malir districts while the JI sweeping District Central makes the political polarisation in the city all the more evident. Similarly in District East, the TMCs comprising properly planned urban areas such as Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Bahadurabad, PECHS, etc have been clinched by the JI while the underprivileged localities of Safoora, Sohrab Goth and Chanesar Town will be ruled by the PPP.

Originally published in The News