KARACHI: Thirteen candidates belonging to different political and religious parties are contesting elections on NA-250, a National Assembly constituency in Karachi’s West district that comprises sub-division of SITE industrial area and Orangi Town.

The number of registered voters in the constituency — which includes most parts of old NA-240 — is 400,675, including 157,262 female and 243,413 male voters.

The contesting candidates are Fayyaz Kaimkhani (Muttahida Qaumi Movement), Ali Ahmed (Pakistan Peoples Party), Naeem (Mutahida Majlis-i-Amal), Attaullah (Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf), Shahi Syed (Awami National Party), Mehmood Khan (Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party), Syed Hafeezuddin (Pak Sarzameen Party), Mohammad Ishaq (Mohajir Quami Movement-Haqiqi), Syed Kashif Ali Shah (Tahreek Labbaik Pakistan), Attahullah (Allah-o-Akber Tehreek) and three independents candidates — Aslam Shah, Syed Shahnawaz and Mohammad Ashraf.

The MQM as a unified entity has won the seat (former NA-240) thrice

Most of the people residing in the constituency — comprising localities including Kuwari Colony, New Mianwali Colony, Baloch Goth, Qasba Colony, Pathan Colony, Labour Colony, Jahanabad, Old Golimar, Pak Colony etc — belong to lower-income groups as well as different ethnic backgrounds, including Urdu speaking, Pakhtuns, Punjabis, Balochs, Hazarawals, Seraikis, Sindhis etc.

Many of them are home-based workers and others are employed in industrial units in nearby SITE area as wage earners. There are also people who work in government and private sectors and small vendors.

Residents face severe water shortage, loadshedding

One of the most important issues being faced by the residents is scarcity of water. These are areas hooked to the water supply network linked to the Hub dam, which owing to a long dry spell has almost gone dry.

Residents of these areas are facing severe water shortages and are angry but their anguish increases manifolds when they see regular supply of water to the nearby industries while they along with their women, elderly and children have to stand in long queues to purchase water from the tanker mafia at exorbitant rates.

The road network and the sewerage system in most parts of the constituency, where long duration of announced and unannounced loadshedding is a routine feature, are also in poor state.

The candidates will face a tough time in responding to and satisfying the angry voters who had been repeatedly promised by the contesting candidates in the past elections that their problems would be solved. But the successful candidates rarely visited these areas after the elections leaving the voters high and dry.

In the 2002 general elections, there were 222,350 registered voters in the NA-240 constituency out of which 87,336 votes (39.3 per cent) were polled. Advocate Sarkaruddin of the MQM had won the seat by getting 30,408 votes and Maulana Shireen Mohammad of the MMA was the runner-up with 22,764 votes. M. Bakhsh Lashari (PPP) got 15,374 votes, K.S. Mujahid Khan Baloch (PML-Q) got 6,090 votes and Mian Ijaz Shafi (PML-N) got 2,124 votes.

In the 2008 elections, there were 279,723 voters and 130,879 of them cast their votes (46.8pc). Khwaja Sohail Mansoor of the MQM won the seat by getting 67,799 votes; while Abdullah Baloch of the PPP got 61,017 votes and Qari Usman of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl got 1,600 votes.

In the 2013 general elections, the number of total voters was 287,170 and 163,135 votes (56.8pc) were polled. Mr Mansoor of the MQM improved his past performance and secured 87,805 votes — over 20,000 more votes than his previous tally. Naz Baloch of the PTI, who now joined the PPP, had bagged 21,096 votes and Abid Hussain Sathi of the PPP got 19,360 votes.

The results of the past three elections show that the Altaf Hussain-led MQM had won the seat thrice as a unified political entity. But, now the party is facing challenges and had divided into factions that may have affected its unified vote bank.

There are a substantial number of voters that support religious parties in the constituency and when the religious parties contested the election jointly on the platform of the MMA they got a good number of votes.

Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2018