Delimiting Karachi

The MQM leader Farooq Sattar has filed petitions in the apex court stating that drawing new constituency boundaries in the city is illegal and unconstitutional. That it could not be conducted without census which again should not be limited to Karachi only but be countrywide.

The MQM appears to be scared of the fresh demarcation of the constituencies, which would be on the basis of equal distribution of the number of the people in each constituency and the total number of the constituencies in the city will not only increase in number but could also fall in the city regions not under the strong hold of the MQM. Thus the fresh alignment could favour the non-MQM candidates from other ethnic groups and origins, especially the Pathans and Baloch.  This would obviously weaken their hold on Karachi and through Karachi on Sindh.  Whatever MQM may say the fact remains that such delimitation would be the most realistic and according to the ground realities.  More than that, it will ensure a true democratic representation of the entire populace of Karachi.  As the delimitation would be applicable to all political parties and the MQM calling itself a democratic party should accept the ground realities.

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)