• PA unanimously passes bill to change key condition in SLGA 2013
• Amendment enables PPP to field unelected Wahab for Karachi mayor

KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly on Thursday unanimously approved an amendment to the Sindh Local Government Act (SLGA) 2013 that paved the way for any person, who has not been directly elected as chairman or vice chairman of a union committee/council (UC) in the province, to become mayor/deputy mayor and chairman/vice chairman of a district municipal corporation or district council for at least six months if elected with the majority of votes in a city/district council.

The Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2023 states any person could run for the polls of mayor, deputy mayor, chairman and vice chairman but has to be elected as a member of the respective council within six months to continue holding the office.

The SLGA 2013 stated that one had to be chairman of a UC in the jurisdiction of a metropolitan corporation to contest the mayoral election. But, in the new legislation, any person can contest the mayoral election.

Besides lawmakers belonging to the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) and the lone member of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal Abdur Rashid of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) also supported the amended bill, which was passed unanimously as none of the Pakitan Tehreek-i-Insaf lawmakers turned up to the house on Thursday.

Wahab in the run for mayoral election

While the JI’s mayoral candidate Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has been elected as a UC chairman, the PPP despite being the single largest party in the metropolis has lacked any widely known candidate among those elected directly in the local government elections.

PPP sources said that the amendment will enable the ruling party to field former Karachi administrator Barrister Murtaza Wahab, who did not contest the direct election of a UC chairman, as its mayoral candidate.

The sources told Dawn that the decision to field Barrister Wahab as the PPP’s candidate for the office of Karachi mayor was taken by the top party leadership on Wednesday.

They said that party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari chaired a meeting of the office-bearers of the party at Bilawal House on Wednesday. Mr Bhutto-Zardari and PPP leader Faryal Taplur conveyed to other participants in the meeting that the party would field Murtaza Wahab as a its candidate for Karachi mayor.

The sources said that the top leadership ordered the Sindh chief minister and other government functionaries to amend the law when it was pointed out that Barrister Wahab was not an elected UC chairman and cannot contest the mayoral election because of restrictions in the SLGA 2013.

If elected as Karachi mayor, the PPP will ask Barrister Wahab to contest by-election on a UC seat from Gizri.

However, the sources said that the PPP will make a formal announcement regarding its candidates for mayors/chairmen of Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and other districts at a later stage due to apprehensions of a legal challenge to the amended law.

Same provision existed in Musharraf’s era

The local government system introduced by former military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf had also allowed any person to contest the mayoral election and after election it was not mandatory for him/her to contest election and became a UC chairman.

“The same provision was there during Nazim’s local government system,” Local Government Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah told the house without mentioning Gen Musharraf’s name.

He said that the amendment was also earlier part of SLGA 2013 and it was in accordance with the constitutional provisions.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2023