Appointments of Karachi, Hyderabad administrators suspended

Merely a fortnight after their appointments, the Sindh government has held its orders to post new administrators in Hyderabad and two districts of Karachi in abeyance, it emerged on Wednesday.

The new administrators had been appointed on December 20 in Hyderabad, and to run Karachi’s East and Korangi district municipal corporations (DMCs) in line with the accord signed between the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) before the latter decided to join the new coalition government in the Centre last year. Dr Syed Saifur Rehman had also been appointed Karachi’s administrator in December last year to implement the same accord.

Now the provincial LG department has issued the notification to suspend the orders to appoint new administrators in Hyderabad and in Karachi’s East and Korangi’s districts. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had twice objected to these appointments on the grounds that the provincial government could not undertake such transfers and postings after a fresh date of LG polls had been announced.

The LG polls are scheduled to be held in Karachi and Hyderabad on January 15. Last month Muhammad Farooque had been appointed as Hyderabad administrator, Syed Shakeel Ahmed as East DMC administrator and Muhammad Sharif as Korangi DMC administrator. Their appointment orders have now been held in abeyance.

The provincial government has decided to suspend the three appointments in the backdrop of an emerging rift between the PPP and the MQM-P, as the latter’s reservations about the delimitation of constituencies for holding the LG polls in Karachi are yet to be resolved.

A round of talks recently held at the Bilawal House on this issue and on other unimplemented points in the accords the MQM-P had signed with the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz remained inconclusive. The talks had been attended by representatives of all three parties. The MQM-P has decided to hold a protest on these issues in Karachi on January 9.