Sindh Labour and Human Resources Minister Saeed Ghani claimed on Sunday that the majority of 43 Union Committee (UC) chairmen will not vote for the Jamaat-e-Islami’s candidate for the Karachi mayor seat.

The political situation surrounding Karachi’s mayoral elections took an interesting turn over the weekend when the opposition PTI announced its unconditional support for JI’s candidate for the city mayor’s slot.

The decision gives enough numerical strength to the two-party alliance to successfully bring in their joint candidate for the key post of the local government set-up.

It all started with the statement of the PTI announcing support for the JI candidate after several rounds of consultation.

In the statement, the PTI didn’t even mention any condition for its support to the JI for the Karachi mayoral candidate and asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to ensure free and fair polling.

Addressing a press conference in Karachi today, Ghani said the PTI’s elected UC chairmen in their party meeting had made it clear that they wouldn’t support JI in the upcoming mayoral election.

He added that the majority of the 43 newly elected UC chairmen of the PTI had made up their minds to stay neutral in the mayoral poll, citing how PTI Chairman Imran Khan and JI Karachi chief had both been disappointed over the decision.

The Sindh minister said JI leader Hafiz Naeemur Rehman should ensure that all 86 members of his party in the city council would vote for him in the upcoming poll for the Karachi mayor’s seat.

Ghani revealed that he had found out through some people in JI that fellow party members had objections to Rehman’s attitude.

He claimed that the PPP and its allies would have a total of 173 members in the city council, adding that his party was merely short of nine members for gaining the desired strength needed to win the mayor poll.

Ghani also expressed confidence that the PPP would win the mayor polls after the local government elections were held.

He said the Sindh government didn’t need to detain PTI’s UC chairmen in order to prevent them from voting in favour of the JI’s candidate.

Responding to allegations pertaining to delimitation being done in favour of PPP, the minister highlighted that prior to 2013 the provincial government had always carried out the delimitations but later when the Sindh Local Government Act-2013 was challenged in court, the judiciary authorised the election commission to do the delimitations.

He recalled that PPP’s Sindh government for the first time had done the delimitations in 2013 that were declared null and void by the court. “The 2015 local government elections in Sindh were held on the basis of delimitations carried out by the election commission.”

Ghani, who is also the PPP Karachi president, stated that the latest local government elections were also held on the basis of the delimitations carried out by the ECP.

He, however, maintained that the Sindh government as per the law had determined the total number of local councils in the province.

The Sindh minister said the candidate of JI should become the mayor if he gained the confidence of the majority members of the city council but if the candidate failed to secure the desired number of votes in the mayoral poll, he should respect the mandate of the other party.

Ghani warned the JI leaders to not accuse the PPP of illegally occupying the city if its candidate won the mayoral election.

He told media persons that the PPP’s ticket holders who had won the local government elections belonged to the city of Karachi as much as the winning candidates of any other political party.

Meanwhile, PPP Sindh General Secretary Waqar Mehdi informed journalists that a consultation process was underway to finalise the candidate of the PPP for the Karachi mayor election.

He clarified that the Sindh chief minister while addressing a press conference the other day had jokingly said that the PPP’s candidate for mayor election was sitting with him in the room.

Mehdi said there were no differences within the party on the issue of the candidate for the mayoral poll as the entire organisation was on the same page regarding this issue.