KARACHI, Nov 7: Excluding the newly-notified Korangi district, all the other five districts of the city have proposed a total of 216 union committees to represent the future city council, it emerged on Thursday.

The council’s total strength — estimated on the proposed delimitations — will be at least 286 with the inclusion of seats reserved for women and labourers or peasants.

As Karachi commissioner Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui is hearing objections to the proposed constituencies for union committees in the city’s districts, various political parties are filing proposals and disapproval over the area, population and cause behind the bifurcation and trifurcation of certain constituencies.

So far, Mr Siddiqui has gathered and decided more than 200 objections to districts Malir and South and deferred the settlement of arguments between the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party and key opposition party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, on the number and size of union committees in Karachi Central till Saturday.

The objections on Karachi East and West are to be heard before the commissioner sends his final recommendations to the provincial government.

Officials in the local government department said they had received the number of proposed union committees from five districts totalling 216 with Karachi East having the most (52 UCs).

The breakdown of the proposed UCs submitted by other districts suggested 48 UCs apiece for Karachi Central, Karachi South and Karachi West, and Malir with 20 UCs.

According to the Sindh Local Government Act, 2013, passed and signed into law in August, the city’s metropolitan corporation members will include all elected chairmen of the union committees of the five districts.

This shows, if the number of the proposed UCs remains unchanged, the city council will have 216 members elected as chairmen of their respective UCs.

The law further states about the reserved seats in the council to the extent of 22 per cent for women members, 5pc for non-Muslim members and 5pc for labourers or peasant members to be indirectly elected by the members elected in general vote.

Translating the percentage points into numbers with baseline of 216 elected members, the council will have at least 48 seats for female members and 11 apiece for labourers and religious minorities.

In the proposed set-up the city council will be 286-member-strong, much larger than the 178-member council during Gen Pervez Musharraf’s regime.

Before Gen Musharraf’s controversial LB system, the KMC’s council consisted of 262 councillors who would elect their mayor and deputy mayor.

In the system introduced by Gen Musharraf’s regime, which remained effective from 2001 to ’09, the KMC was renamed the City District Government Karachi with each of its KP (Karachi Panchayat as it was called then) or constituency – 178 in total – had been made a union council with 21 members with a nazim and a naib nazim.

In the Sindh Local Government Act, 2013, passed and signed into law in August, the KMC took its old title back and union councils have been made union committees in it’s the urban areas. The city’s district council has also been revived to cater to the rural parts of the city.

The new law has traces of Gen Musharraf’s law and departure from Gen Ziaul Haq’s 1979 Sindh Local Government Ordinance, in which a KP could elect just a councillor to become a member of the KMC council.

Now each ward has a union committee, in place of a union council as introduced during the 2000s, which would comprise a chairman and a vice chairman as joint candidates, four general members and one member each on woman, labourer or peasant and non-Muslim seats.

The elected chairmen of the UCs would be members of the KMC council.

The metropolitan corporation will elect a mayor and a deputy mayor from its members elected.

The same procedure and formula will be adopted for the five DMCs of the city. Thus each DMC should have the strength on the proposed formula with 22pc women seats and 5pc each labourer or peasant seats as follows:

Karachi East (70 members), Karachi South, Central and West (65 members each) and Malir (27 members).

Officials, however, had opaque views on the status of the newly-formed Korangi district, which has been carved out of Karachi East. Besides, recently, the provincial government has made certain basic changes in other districts barring Central District.

Officials said they had instructions for delimitations of the five districts on their status till Nov 4, that is before the notification for Korangi district and changes in the other four districts.

However, they said if no union committee overlapped a neighbouring district, Korangi’s delimitations would remain intact whatever it showed in previous Karachi East.

The matter on which the parties argued over the most was the population of certain union committees, which had formed the city’s council before General Pervez Musharraf introduced a new local government law on Aug 14, 2001.

The district administrations had gone for delimitations in the light of the provincial government’s guidelines, which barred them from using the pre-Musharraf local government system as the baseline by employing the 1998 census figures and 2011 electoral rolls as key databases.

Among the guidelines, the authorities had been asked to ensure that by carving out a new union committee they should not incise a census block and no such constituency overlapped between two subdivisions. Besides, a union committee, which forms a college for the city council of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, should represent a population between 40,000 and 50,000.

For, like the rest of the country, the city has not seen a census since 1998, the respective district administrations relied on estimated figures by employing a formula of an increase of 1.8 per cent a year, which gave them an aggregate increase of around 30-40 per cent in the city’s population in the last 15 years.

Though most parties had little qualms over the proposed number of the UCs in the city, the MQM has serious reservations over it, which its leadership sees as the government’s ‘pre-planned agenda to win the city council’.

The MQM’s representatives filing objections in the tribunal, headed by the commissioner, saw a fishy plan on part of the PPP government when they pointed out the reduction of the UCs, particularly in districts Central and East and a hefty increase for district South.

They said district East had 65 KPs and Central had 56 KPs previously and in the proposed delimitations East had been given 52 UCs and Central 48 UCs. Karachi West had 47 KPs, which remained at par with 48 UCs now while Karachi South’s 37 KPs are 48 UCs.

The Karachi Central administration had filed two lists to the local government department, the previous one proposed for 61 UCs and the latest reduced it to 48 for unexplained reasons.

The MQM’s objections and the PPP’s insistence on the opposite lists led to the putting off of Central’s proceedings till Saturday. The parties bickered over various UCs in district South and filed 141 objections.

Malir was the only district where the parties showed restraint and harmony to settle differences.