Proposal made to expand HMC

DC submits recommendation to chief secretary for enhancing number of UCs from 96 to 160

HYDERABAD:

The enlarged Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) will consist of 160 union committees (UCs), up from the existing number of 96 UCs, according to the final proposal submitted by the deputy commissioner to Sindh secretary local government. Seven of the nine town municipal corporations (TMCs) of the HMC will consist of 18 UCs while the number of UCs in the remaining two TMCs will be 17 each.

Earlier, the administration was considering keeping the number of the UCs at 16 in each of the TMC. The planned delimitation is based on the 2017 population census which had counted 2,199,928 souls in the city. The areas of the four revenue talukas, City, Latifabad, Qasimabad and Hyderabad, which fall in the jurisdiction of the HMC have a population of around 2.1 million people.

The administration claims that it has kept the size of each UC at about 13,000 people. In an earlier unsigned letter of the district administration which had leaked to the media, the names of TMCs number one, six and seven were suggested to be TMC Hosh Muhammad Sheedia, TMC Qasimabad Hussainabad and TMC Karan Khan Shoro. The last one was named after the grandfather of Sindh irrigation minister Jam Khan Shoro who is an elected MPA from Qasimabad.

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However, the official sources claim, in view of the reaction of the civil society and the media reports the administration changed the name of that corporation to TMC Qasimabad. The names of the first two TMCs were also changed to Nerunkot and Hussainabad.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan has opposed the restructured shape of the HMC, arguing that City and Latifabad talukas, which have a history of electing the party’s legislators and LG representatives, have not been given due representation. According to the MQM-P, both the talukas were supposed to have three TMCs on the basis of the population - the former is inhabited by 725,153 people and the latter 703,690 people.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2022.