The NA-246 constituency in Karachi is made up of areas that have been at the centre of political power in the city for over 26 years now.

The constituency has a number of heavily populated concentrations of Mohajirs (Urdu-speakers) that first began to settle in these areas from 1953 onwards.

Most of these concentrated clusters belong to the middle and lower-middle classes, and the literacy rate in this constituency is also one of the highest in Karachi.

PTI may not be expecting a tsunami in NA-256, but making its presence felt in this constituency will be a show of force for this party

Ever since 1988, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has easily won each and every election held in this constituency. In fact, the trend actually began during the 1987 Local Bodies Election in Karachi.

Apart from having large concentrations of middle and lower-middle-class Mohajirs, NA-246 also has some clusters of Pashtuns and Sindhis who mostly reside in their own areas of influence within the constituency.

Recently, when former MQM MNA from the constituency, Nabeel Gabol, resigned, a re-election / by-election was announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

With the MQM currently facing an existential crisis in the face of the action by the law enforcement agencies against the party’s alleged ‘militant wings,’ Imran Khan’s centre-right, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), has enthusiastically jumped in to challenge the MQM in its most secure backyard.

There is nothing foolhardy really about PTI’s desire to challenge Karachi’s largest political party in a constituency that is at the heart of its power in the city.

PTI’s decision to do so is mainly being driven by its belief that the MQM has been put on the back foot by an operation that is being conducted by the police and the Rangers to roll back the city’s escalating crime rates.

MQM, that has for long been accused of running ‘militant wings’ and criminal rackets in the city, has denied any wrong-doing.

Instead its leaders suggest that the ‘establishment’ is once again working to dismantle the party and replace it with political forces close to the thinking of those who want to once again hand back Karachi to regressive and reactionary outfits.

The truth is that the operation in Karachi has so far cut across the board and has clearly taken to task whatever mainstream or clandestine organisations in the city that it believes are involved in serious criminal activities.

These also include combative groups that were once associated with left-liberal parties such as the PPP and the Awami National Party (ANP) as well as terrorist outfits such as the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and some equally radical Sunni and Shia sectarian groups — all of whom have set up shop in various areas of this vast and chaotic city, to generate instant profits from bank robberies, muggings, kidnappings, extortion rackets, land grabbing, etc.

So it is understandable that with the MQM being Karachi’s largest political group for many years, it was always going to feel the greatest impact of an open and ‘non-political’ operation in Karachi.

However, PTI and many other political entities that mostly derive their power and influence from areas outside of the Sindh province, do usually end up underestimating MQM’s genuine electoral popularity in the city.

This standing is drawn from the popularity of some rather remarkable development projects (undertaken by the MQM over the last two decades) that have benefitted a large number of Karachiites. These include the building of roads, overhead bridges, underpasses and parks.

The party also has the reputation of getting things done, especially in areas (mohallahs) that are part of the constituencies where MQM has its largest vote-banks.

Thus it would be naïve to believe that the fear of MQM’s darker sides alone garners votes for the party.

Additionally, in the wake of the rising tide of religious militancy in Pakistan, MQM has also positioned itself as being a political and ideological bulwark against religious extremism in Karachi.

Some even fear that if MQM’s political power is weakened, the vacuum may be filled by the more clandestine and reactionary forces.

But PTI thinks otherwise. It surprised many pundits during the 2013 election by becoming the party with the second-largest percentage of votes in Karachi — something that till 2008 was enjoyed by the PPP.

PTI rejects the label of being a reactionary force (that MQM accuses it of being), by pointing out that the majority of the votes that it received in Karachi in 2013 were cast by the educated middle-class voters.

This is true, even though many of them were first-time voters and also, a large number of the votes that the party received in Karachi also came from the city’s large Pashtun community that (before 2008), either voted for the left-liberal ANP or the religious, JUI-F. Disgruntled PPP and MQM voters too voted for the PTI in the city.

What is NA-246 today constituted NA-132 and NA-133 during the historical 1970 election. The right-wing Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) won from here during the mentioned election.

The Urdu-speakers before the rise of the MQM were considered to be socially liberal but politically conservative and that’s why Karachi voted for right-wing parties such as JI and Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP), when the rest of the country was voting in large numbers for left parties such as the PPP and the now defunct NAP.

MQM emerged in 1984 when ethnic tensions between the Mohajirs and the city’s Pakhtun community began taking an ugly turn. The party became a political expression of the Mohajirs. To undermine the JI and JUP in the city, MQM began to remove the Mohajir dichotomy of being socially liberal and politically conservative.

The constituency became NA-186 and 187 during the next major election in 1988. MQM candidates decimated its opponents here by huge margins. The trend continued across the 1990s, with the PPP always coming a distant second.

During the 2002 election, NA-186 and 187 were merged to become NA-246. It was also during this election that the MQM for the first time faced a serious challenge here. It came from the right-wing MMA, a united front of the country’s major religious parties.

The front managed to reignite the support here for JI and JUP and managed to gain 32,879 votes. The MQM candidate won the election by garnering 53,134 votes, but the tally was the lowest that an MQM candidate had ever received in this constituency.

In the 2008 election, MQM was back to winning big again in NA-246 when its candidate received a whopping 186,933 votes.

During the 2013 election, when liberal parties such as the PPP, MQM and ANP were being targeted by extremist groups, MQM still won big in NA-246 by receiving 137,874 votes.

But most interesting was the fact that PTI (a relatively new entrant in Karachi’s electoral politics) managed to bag 31, 875 votes. This meant that PTI managed to attract 17 per cent of the votes in a constituency that remains to be the bastion of MQM’s electoral fortunes.

So who voted for PTI here? Experts believe majority of the voters were the Pakhtuns and Sindhis of the constituency and also first-time voters and some disgruntled MQM voters.

PTI is not looking or expecting to win the by-election here. I believe it simply wants to extend its percentage of votes in this constituency to make a point. And that is, if it can gain around 40 to 50 thousand votes in NA-246, it can then get a lot more elsewhere in Karachi.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, April 5th, 2015

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