Dividing the metropolis

KARACHI: All the opposition parties of Sindh as well as many of Karachi’s people have mixed views about subdividing the metropolis into 26 towns, Bol News has learnt.

The parties are on one page and opposing the newly-delimited and demarcated 26 towns following the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Act 2021. Some locals hoped for the best while others turned it down on the basis of ethnicity which would only benefit the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led provincial government.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) with other opposition parties and likeminded businesspeople rejected the new LG law and were holding protests and conferences to get it (the law) rejected.

They urged the courts to interpret and implement Article 140 of the Constitution, which says that each province shall, by law, establish a local government system and devolve political, administrative, financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments.  Article 140 could resolve many riddles in this third tier of government. They stressed the need for empowering the local bodies system and devolving powers to the third tier.

Moreover, Jamaat-i-Islami has continued to protest against this law for several days and recently announced that it would widen its demonstration in days to come.

‘Root of democracy’

“A local government is [the] root of democracy which focuses on three main components. These include rationalisation of authority (executive, legislature and judiciary), specialisation of administration (bureaucracy) and political mobilisation and full participation of people in elections,” a senior political analyst and former Karachi University Political Science Department chairperson professor Dr Arshad Karim elaborated.

He further said until the local government is empowered, there will be no stability in the country.

It is not democracy where you hold polls without the fair function of the three main components after elections, he added. “Only empowered LG could eliminate two destructive mindsets — regionalism (like Sindhi and Mohajir) and sectarianism in the province or in the country.”

‘Occupying’ urban areas

Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Haleem Adil Sheikh said that instead of devolving powers to the lower level, PPP yearns to run local bodies through a handful of ministries and to occupy cities and towns.

“These are politically-motivated divisions of 26 towns in Karachi so that the PPP may enjoy full monopoly and control over [the city]. PPP forms less towns where it has less vote bank and where there is a majority of the ruling party, there are more towns through illogical delimitations,” he further said.

He also said that he won a seat of the provincial assembly from PS-99 where there is only Union Committee-31 which has been converted into Sohrab Goth Town to manipulate upcoming elections. He highlighted that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had also expressed its serious reservations about it.

Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) president Anis Qaimkhani said, “Although the PSP does not believe in ethnicity and our politics is not based on regionalism, yet PPP has made towns in the wrong way without setting a formula and without envisaging the population of localities.”

He said that PPP has divided towns on the basis of ethnicity, its politics and vote bank to make full use of new delimitations of Karachi. “It is sad that PPP took such initiatives which brought about a sense of deprivation and substantial unrest in society. PPP is [creating] an atmosphere that would not benefit Sindh and the country. The same case happened to Hyderabad district where 64 per cent of the population of Latifabad and Hyderabad tehsil has fewer towns than Qasimabad and rural Hyderabad tehsil.”

Mohajir Ittehad Tehreek chairperson Dr Saleem Haider appealed to the chief justice, prime minister and chief of army staff to intervene and get this ‘anti-Mohajir’ law abolished forthwith.

“For better management, if Karachi could be divided into 26 towns, for the same purpose, why cannot Pakistan have more provinces? The easiest way would be to declare each division as a province with proper autonomy,” he further said.

Sher Bano, an educationist who belongs to Mauripur, said, “It is the government’s privilege to arrange or rearrange boundaries and different jurisdictions for administrative reasons. If Musharraf’s regime can change or convert Karachi into 18 towns, therefore the PPP-led provincial government has a right to do so.”

Noted demographer Mehtab Karim said for better management, it is a good idea to divide the city into smaller towns but 26 towns may be too many. “Dividing Karachi into 12 towns, each containing about two million population should be sufficient; or each of the 20 National Assembly constituencies could be declared as a town.”

In 1951, the whole of West Pakistan had 33 million people, he added. “Now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone has that many people. Sindh’s population was six million in 1951 which has now exceeded 55 million and Punjab had about 20 million people in 1951; now its population exceeds 110 million,” he highlighted.

Naeem Sultan Khan, a businessperson who lives in the Defence Housing Authority, stated, “I do not know about its political repercussions and implications, but as a layman I want smaller towns for better control and more development in the metropolis.”

Abdul Latif, who is a resident of Old Golimar, stated, “Subdividing Karachi does not affect the residents but PPP and MQM-P claim the pros and cons because of their vested political interests.”

Mohammad Rafiq, a senior citizen from Gulshan-e-Iqbal, said that 26 towns of Karachi would take a heavy toll on Urdu-speaking people as the Sindh government has conducted the delimitations [in] its own interests and it will stand to benefit from these changes. “Locals are already facing numerous civic problems compounded by the Sindh government in various localities of Karachi. But now they are deprived of rights of complaints as it happens in rural areas of the province.”