Kashmir polls fever starts gripping parties in Karachi

Political parties become active for two AJK Legislative
Assembly seats reserved for Kashmiris living in Sindh

Karachi

At his office in Quaidabad, Sardar Mufti Naseer Ahmed, a Kashmiri political activist associated with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, is busy gathering the data of his community members living in the area.

For the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly elections expected in May or July, political parties’ Karachi chapters have become active in the city’s Kashmiri-populated neighbourhoods to win the two seats there reserved for the community members and refugees living in Sindh.

The LA-30 (Jammu-I) is a constituency reserved for Kashmiris belonging to AJK and it comprises Sindh and five divisions of Punjab.

In the 2011 elections, there were 68,000 votes in the LA-30. Around 35,000 of them were in Karachi, say Kashmiri leaders in the city.

In the last polls held in July 2011, Muttahida Qaumi Movement candidate Tahir Khokhar had secured the LA-30 seat by begging 30,620 votes, defeating PML-N’s Abdul Rasheed Mirza, who had received 18,301 votes.

The LA-36 (Kashmir Valley –I) is a constituency reserved for Kashmiris from Indian-held Kashmir who had migrated in the 1940s and 1950s.

There are 6,200 voters, including over 4,000 in Karachi, while the rest are in Quetta and the rural districts of Sindh.

MQM candidate Saleem Butt had won that seat in 2011 by bagging 4, 633 votes.

Kashmiri community in Karachi

Although there are no official statistics available about the Kashmiri community living in Karachi, an Election Commission of Pakistan official, who was involved in the last AJK polls, said National Registration and Database Authority (NADRA) figures showed that there are two million Kashmiris in the city.

Kashmiris are scattered throughout the city – in Landhi Industrial Area, Shershah, Manzoor Colony, Kashmir Colony, Neelam Colony, Cantonment Station, Lyari, Korangi Crossing, Orangi Town, Sultanabad, Baldia Town and Nursery. In most of these areas, there are “Kashmiri Mohallas” where they live together.

Community leaders say that many Kashmiris in Karachi moved back to AJK or Rawalpindi and Lahore in the last seven years because of the violence in the city. Several Kashmiri Mohallas in the city have been vacated in recent years.

All major political parties and Kashmiri nationalist parties have their organisational set-ups in the city and regularly arrange Kashmir Day celebrations, commemoration of the anniversaries of Kashmiri leaders including Maqbool Butt and other activities in these areas.

AJKLA polls in Karachi

The Kashmir wings of all major political parties in the city have started their election campaigns for the LA-30 and LA-36 polls. Prominent among them are the PML-N, the Pakistan People’s Party, the MQM, the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Muslim Conference and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

So far, the political parties have not announced their candidates for the two seats.

MQM’s Saleem Butt is confident that his party would retain the two seats because of its performance.

“The MQM had tried its best to address the issues of the Kashmiris living in Karachi and Hyderabad and that is why that will again for the party,” he added. He said the Kashmiri community has been living in the city for several decades and many of its members had joined the MQM in recent years.

However, rival parties alleged that the MQM had won the two seats in the previous polls through rigging.

Muhamamd Saghir, the Karachi district chief of the JI AJK, said the MQM had blackmailed the PPP as the latter needed its support in the National Assembly and then using the state machinery, it had rigged the 2011 AJKLA polls using fake identification documents.

He said the JI was in negotiations with the PML-N and the PTI. “Our party’s shura meeting, scheduled to be held in a few days, will decide the party’s policy and candidates for the two seats,” he added.

Qazi Muhammad Bashir, former PPP AJK president in Sindh, said his party chief, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, had assigned the task of preparing for the AJKLA polls to the party’s leaders.

“The PPP had always tried to address the issues of the Kashmiri community in the city and therefore we are confident that our party will easily win the two seats if free and fair elections are conducted,” Bashir added.

He said the current PPP government in the AJK under the leadership of Pimre Minister Chuadary Abdul Majeed, had carried out significant development work in AJK.  

PML-N sources said the party’s top leadership had assigned the task of preparing for the polls to its provincial leader Senator Saleem Zia.

An election commission official said after the announcement of the AJK polls dates, a committee comprising Kashmiri community leaders belonging to different political parties would be formed so that it could assist the ECP in making and verifying voter lists.

“Each and every political party has its AJK chapter in Karachi but they become active only when the polls are approaching,” he added.

The political parties have demanded that the ECP should properly prepare and check voters lists and declare an AJK CNIC or an address there compulsory for voting.

They have also called for chalking out a mechanism to verify documents including papers of property in AJK for allowing the Kashmiris living in Karachi to vote.