KARACHI: Some 13 candidates, including independents and those belonging to different political parties, are contesting on NA-251 (which includes many parts of the old NA-242 Karachi West-IV) comprising Mominabad and Orangi Town localities, etc.

There are 405,652 registered voters, of which 165,803 are women and 239,849 are men. The Election Commission of Pakistan has planned to set up 877 polling booths at 284 polling stations for them.

Residents of Mominabad and Orangi Town localities belong mostly to lower- and middle-income groups and are doing government and private jobs. They also include daily wagers, who are employed in nearby industrial areas, and home-based workers, etc.

While people belonging to various ethnicities, including Punjabis, Pakhtuns, Hazarawals, Baloch, Seraikis and Sindhis, reside here, the majority of the population is Urdu speaking.

The road infrastructure in the constituency is in poor condition and one of the major issues being faced by the residents is water scarcity.

NA-251 residents lack basic necessities of life

As these areas get their water from the Hub Dam where the water level has reached the dead level, the majority of the people have to buy drinking water at exorbitant prices from the tanker mafia which is difficult for the low-income groups.

Long hours of announced and unannounced power loadshedding and overflowing sewers plague the constituency.

The contesting candidates will face difficult time in answering unsatisfied voters who have listened to promises being made to them in the past but their problems are still unsolved even after passage of many years.

Names of contesting candidates are: Syed Amin-ul-Haque (Muttahida Qaumi Movement), Mohammad Laeeque Khan (Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal), Mohammad Jamil Zia (Pakistan Peoples Party), Fahad Shafiq (Pakistan Muslim League-N), Mohammad Aslam (Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf), Mohammad Nihal Malik (Pak Sarzameen Party), Sohail Khan (All Pakistan Muslim League), Mumtaz Hussain Ansari (Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan), Iqra Muzammil (Allah-o-Akbar Tehreek) and Naeemullah (Pakistan Muslim Alliance). The independents are: Asif Saleem, Ziarat Khan and Shahid Iqbal.

The seat has been won by the MQM in the past by big margins.

In the 2002 general elections, the total number of voters was 221,227 while 93,335 exercised their right to poll.

Rauf Siddiqui of the MQM got 62,690 votes and won the seat while Taj Mohammad Khan (MMA) was the runner-up. Mr Siddiqui had also won a provincial assembly seat in the same year which he preferred to retain and vacated the National Assembly seat.

The by-election was held in 2003 and MQM’s Abdul Qadir Khanzada emerged victorious by securing 67,051 votes. MMA’s Mairaj-ul-Huda Siddiqui got 17,818 votes and PPP’s Rujhanullah Afridi could get only 100 votes.

In the next general elections of 2008, there were 296,822 voters and 178,842 (60 per cent) cast their votes.

MQM’s Mr Khanzada received 147,892 votes, which were more than double the number of votes he had won in 2003 polls.

PPP’s Afaq Shahid was in the second place with 27,294 votes which was much better than what Mr Afridi had won last time.

The elections of 2013 saw the MQM ‘improving’ its performance again and its candidate Mehboob Alam won 166,836 votes, almost 19,000 more votes than its previous candidate Khanzada had won.

The MQM, when it used to contest as a single political entity, had won this seat in the past four elections — three general (2002, 2008 and 2013) and one by-election (2003).

The party has been facing many problems for the past some time and it looks challenging for it to win again with big margins.

The contesting parties will go all out in luring estranged MQM workers and supporters to vote for them.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2018