The voters in units of Latifabad — a predominantly Urdu-speaking community — nowadays see a woman regularly going to door-to-door asking people to vote for her in the July 25 polls. The diminutive-looking woman candidate walks up to families, shopkeepers, customers and regular people milling around in markets and plazas, party pamphlets and leaflets in hand.

A broad smile on her face, she knocks at doors in upscale neighbourhoods in her constituency as well as low-income localities. Hoping to meet requirements of the Elections Act 2018, making it mandatory for parties to issue five per cent of its tickets to woman candidates, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) fielded Sanam as their candidate from this area, making her the first women to contest polls on a general seat in Hyderabad. This is how 33-year-old Sanam is making history in Hyderabad’s electoral politics.

She has been chosen to contest elections in a stronghold of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan in this historic city. Many understand her nomination to be a formality on the PPP’s part and a way to appease the young candidate, as she was chosen to contest the polls here over young party activist Saleem Arain, a resident of Latifabad and a close friend of many Sindh PPP leaders.

A true Bhutto jiyali by all means, Sanam is married to a Talpur from Mirpurkhas. She actually hails from Umerkot and is the daughter of Malka Walhari, a PPP diehard. She served as taluka president of her district for five to six years before moving to Mirpurkhas district after her marriage. She became general secretary and then president of the district’s women wing. Currently, she is the Hyderabad district women’s wing president.

She has never shied away from participating in political agitations. It is said that only two or three days after her wedding, she was seen participating in an agitation led by Syed Khursheed Shah in Hyderabad against the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz led government — formed in the wake of the much-talked about Sharifs’ massive mandate in the country in 1997 polls — restricting the PPP to 17 seats in the National Assembly.

She recalls how she was remanded to judicial custody in protest against the imposition of emergency by retired General Pervez Musharraf in 2007, and on another occasion ended up in Kot Lakhpat Jail after being nabbed for participating in the reception rally of Asif Ali Zardari in Lahore.

“I was at my parents’ home for a post-marriage ritual that happens a few days after a wedding. As the party’s protest was planned, I joined it in the Saddar area and was arrested by police,” she recalls. Her husband Mir Abbas Talpur was also locked up at the City police station that day for violating Section 144 of the CrPC.

Sanam feels there is a groundswell of support and love for her in her constituency. “I am glad to take on this electoral assignment. I am overwhelmed with the response of people who are mostly from the Urdu-speaking community,” says the PPP activist excitedly, and adds: “If I had not been assigned this constituency for elections, I would have never realised that the conditions here are worse than in Qasimabad, a PPP stronghold.”

And that is why she tells her constituents to test the PPP out at least once. For her, “MQM ka scene end ho gaya hay ab and the situation is altogether different now. So, her party must capitalise on it.”

The PPP is heavily banking on the situation arising out of factionalism within the MQM, especially in the wake of a controversy between Dr Farooq Sattar and Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui surrounding Senate tickets, ending in Sattar’s removal as party’s coordination committee convenor.

Sanam had applied for a reserved seat this year again. But when the party finalised its list of nominees, her name wasn’t on it. She then hoped that her name would be selected for a general seat from Hyderabad. That moment came when Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari awarded her a party ticket. Given the MQM-PPP’s inherent discord, Sanam is not unmindful of the fact that she will have to struggle if she wants to make her contest evenly poised to say the least. “I told the party chairman that even if I don’t win, I will make it tougher for my opponent,” she says laughingly. The energetic activist doesn’t shy away from approaching male voters in markets and going door-to-door to canvass in her constituency.

Canvassing in the thickly-populated neighbourhoods of unit-10 Latifabad, she confidently beckons a slow-moving motorcyclist and hands him a party handbill. “Aik chhoti si koshish may ney ki hay, aik chhoti sey koshish ap kijye ga”, she tells him, before turning to an elderly pan wala to seek his support and then asking a salesman at area’s famous Zafar lassi wala shop to vote for her.

She eyes a close fight with rival candidates mainly from MQM-P, Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP). She squares off against MQM-P’s Nadeem Siddiqui, a political novice, and PSP’s Raheel Ahmed aka Raju Kaimkhani, who defected from MQM to the PSP.

She is aware that the contest is an uphill task for a variety of reasons. It is her first election that, too, on a general seat in an MQM stronghold. Secondly, she understands Hyderabad city on the whole didn’t get anything of note in terms of social development and uplift work in the two full back-to-back tenures of the PPP government.

“We are perhaps victims of our myth that these [Urdu-speaking] areas are out of bounds for us. But ground realities are entirely different. We [as a party] have been maintaining a safe distance unnecessarily from these people and leave the space wide open for others to grab. They are scared too and find no alternate but to elect someone. People tell me that they been waiting for PPP candidates and I tell them that I am here to do away with the hatred that is the outcome of policies of certain quarters,” she asserts.

Her party’s colleague Rajab Khaskheli who contested on this seat in the 2013 polls got 4,500 votes. According to her, the people of this constituency complain of streets in a shambles, open manholes, unavailability of safe drinking water, mounds of garbage and prolonged unscheduled power outages coupled with inflated bills.

As a woman, Sanam also faces problems within her party. Some office-bearers want her to seek the party’s permission every time she goes for canvassing and her contention is that if she keeps asking permission for every programme she plans, she won’t ever manage it. “I am welcomed here and elders put their hands on my head as a gesture of respect and love. People shout jeay Bhutto slogans in the streets. As a women’s wing activist, I used to meet women from this area. Had I known that I would be contesting polls from here, I would have devoted more time to this area,” she admits.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2018