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Thursday March 28, 2024

Old local body revived, but with new tricks

Provincial government restores rural localities’ District Council Karachi but alters old composition to exclude political rivals’ areas for advantage in upcoming LG polls

By Zia Ur Rehman
May 25, 2015
Karachi
The provincial government has revived the District Council Karachi, a separate local body for the rural and coastal parts of the city, accepting a longstanding demand of their residents, but there is a catch – some areas have been deliberately left out to benefit the ruling party in the upcoming local government polls.
In late March, the Sindh government, exercising the powers conferred to it under Section- 10 (1) of the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Act, 2015, had notified the union councils of DCK comprising the rural areas of the city.
The rest of the city will be governed through the municipal corporation and its six district municipal corporations – Korangi, Central, South, East, West and Malir.
According to the notification, the DCK will consist of 17 union councils and the sub-divisions of Shah Mureed, Gadap, Murad Memon (except Deh Thano division) and Deh Landhi (rural) of the sub-division Ibrahim Hyderi are also part of it. However, the limits of its union councils have not been officially announced so far.
The DCK was formed during the Ayub Khan regime in 1960s and continued to exist until it was abolished during Pervez Musharraf’s rule.
Sami Memon, a veteran journalist based in Malir, said the concept of the DCK was to a form a separate legislative forum for local government representatives in the rural, far-flung and undeveloped areas of the city so that equal opportunities could be provided to their residents.
After the announcement of the new local bodies system during the Musharraf government in 2001, the DCK was abolished and the city was divided into 18 towns under the administrative control of the City District Government Karachi.
The DCK was mainly split into Bin Qasim and Gadap towns and residents, political leaders and civil society organisations had staged protest rallies against the move.
Mir Abbas Talpur, the Pakistan People’s Party Malir district information secretary, told The News that his party had fulfilled a longstanding demand of the residents of the city’s rural areas by reviving the DCK and it was a great achievement.
However, there is a twist in this “great achievement”. Many areas that were part of the council before it was abolished have been excluded from the revived one including the union councils of Ibrahim Hyderi, Rehri Goth, Landhi, Gaghar and Gulshan-e-Hadeed from the former Bin Qasim Town and the union councils of Gabo Pat, Manghopir and Songal.
Khuda Dino Shah, a prominent political leader and a former nazim of Bin Qasim Town, said the PPP feared that it would be defeated in the upcoming local bodies elections in the rural areas and that was why it had intentionally divided the Malir district to weaken its political opponents there.
“The new delimitation is a pre-poll rigging tactic and we want the government to restore the DCK to its original shape as it was in 2001,” he added.
Shah said the City District Government Karachi during its 10-year tenure had largely ignored the rural parts of Malir in terms of development.
“The residents of Malir are worried that their areas will again be neglected by the district municipal corporation.”
Past DCK polls
Haji Shafi Jamot, currently a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MPA, has thrice been elected the chairman of the DCK.
Abdul Hakeem Baloch, presently the state minister for communication, has also been elected the DCK chairman once. Since 1993, there were no DCK elections as its affairs were run through administrators and deputy commissioners.
Memon said Jamot, Baloch, Shah and other key leaders are part of a strong political alliance in the Malir district that could pose problems for the PPP in the DCK polls expcted to be held in September this year.
In the 2013 general elections, Baloch and Jamot, on PML-N tickets, had defeated the PPP’s candidates in the constituencies of NA-258 and PS-129, respectively.
Saleem Baloch, another political leader allied with them, gave a tough time to the PPP in the PS-130 constituency.
Political analysts say that after the recent delimitation, the PPP can easily win the DCK polls as the areas of their rival leaders have been excluded from the council’s jurisdiction.
“The areas of Jamot and Shah have been excluded from the DCK and that means that the PPP won’t have to face a powerful rival in the polls,” said Memon.
PPP leaders argue that the delimitation of the DCK was an administrative issue and had nothing to do with the local politics of the Malir district. The PPP Malir district information secretary said the administration, while framing the jurisdiction of any district, recognises the natural boundaries like rivers, nullahs and major roads.
“It isn’t based on the will of a specific political party or individual,” Talpur added.
Referring to the examples of Gulshan-e-Hadeed and Ibrahim Hyderi, Talpur said in recent years, these areas had become urban towns and including them in the DCK would be unfair.
Rejecting the allegation that the some areas had deliberately been left out of the DCK to benefit the ruling party in the upcoming polls, he said Malir had remained a traditional stronghold of the PPP as the party had carried out development worked there and created job opportunities for its residents.