Lower Sindh’s electoral battles to watch out for

HYDERABAD:

Fierce electoral contests are underway in multiple constituencies spanning the four districts of Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas divisions, encompassing the "Laar" region of the province, featuring a total of 18 National Assembly and 39 Sindh Assembly seats.

While the number of closely contested seats remains relatively low in this region, key contenders include the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P).

Additionally, candidates from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan (JI), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are actively campaigning in these divisions.

The battleground, though varying in intensity across constituencies, is particularly fierce in Hyderabad,

Badin, Mirpurkhas, and Tharparkar districts. These areas collectively hold 9 National Assembly and 19 provincial assembly seats, with a total of 3,756,314 registered voters.

In the absence of reliable electoral surveys, the attendance at public rallies and meetings serves as a key indicator of a party's popularity.

HyderabadThe electorate of the second largest city of Sindh has always appeared divided along ethnic lines since the 1988 general elections. The Urdu-speaking population, which inhabits in City and Latifabad Talukas, used to elect the representatives from the MQM-P. The inhabitants of Qasimabad and Hyderabad Talukas, meanwhile, always went with the PPP’s candidates.

However, the 2018 elections witnessed a maiden blow to that three-decade long divide, when a PPP candidate, Abdul Jabbar Khan, defeated MQM-P’s candidate in Latifabad on a Sindh Assembly seat. Observers credited an split in the MQM-P’s voters, and the emergence of a new vote bank for the PTI, as the reasons behind the PPP’s inroad into MQM-P’s erstwhile stronghold.

Currently, an electoral combat is unfolding on three National Assembly and six Sindh Assembly seats in the district that boasts of 1,225,147 votes – 662,713 male and 562,434 female.

In view of the 2018 election results, the rejuvenated MQM-P will be defending its victory on two seats of the National Assembly and three of the Sindh Assembly and the PPP on one National Assembly and three Sindh Assembly.

With the PTI facing obstacles in its path to election campaigning, a three-way contest which played out in 2018, is likely to turn into a direct electoral battle between two major parties.

Nevertheless, six of the constituencies like NA-218, NA-219, PS-60, PS-61, PS-63 and PS-65 will arguably remain immune to the prevailing political tension. On the City taluka-based NA-220, MQM-P’s former MNA Syed Waseem Hussain will be defending his party’s stronghold against PPP’s Waseem Rajput.

The PS-64, which falls under NA-220, is also set to see a contest between MQM-P’s Rashid Khan and PPP’s Mukhtiar Ahmed alias Aajiz Dhamra. On PS-62 in Latifabad, PPP’s former MPA from the constituency Abdul Jabbar Khan is pitted against MQM-P’s Sabir Hussain Qaimkhani, a strong candidate who was elected MNA from Latifabad in 2018.

BadinIn the agriculture and oil rich coastal district of Badin which is home to five sugar industries albeit with rampant poverty, the PPP is confronted with the party’s dissidents former Sindh home minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, his wife former National Assembly Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza and their sons.

Read: PPP-GDA electoral showdown expected in Sanghar

From the platform of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), the Mirza family caused upsets for the PPP in 2018 when Dr Fehmida Mirza and her son Hasnain Ali Mirza were elected as MNA from NA-230 Badin and MPA from PS-72, respectively.

The Mirzas began to wage an electoral war against their party since 2015 local government elections when they bagged close to half seats of the local bodies.

However, according to the local observes, the spirit of the past two elections seems missing in the ongoing campaign of Mirzas with both Dr Zulfiqar and Dr Fehmida out of the electoral combat.

The nomination forms of the couple were rejected on the basis of their alleged bank default. When the Sindh High Court restored their forms, the process of allocating election symbols was already completed with the GDA’s symbol ‘star’ given to their sons.

The couple, mainly Dr Zulfiqar, is now campaigning for their sons Hasnain, a former MPA, and Hassam Mirza. The former is running from PS-70 Badin-III and the latter from NA-223 and PS-71 Badin-IV. The district, with 942,176 voters has two constituencies of the NA and five of the PS.

MirpurkhasIn Mirpurkhas district the PPP is facing a two-fold electoral attack—from MQM-P and an independent candidate Syed Ali Nawaz Shah, a former PPP stalwart and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s associate elected to the Senate, National and Sindh assemblies multiple times since 1977.

The district has two seats of the National Assembly and four of the provincial assembly with 865,400 voters. In 2018, Shah as an independent candidate defeated the PPP’s opponent on NA-218 Mirpurkhas-I with the support of MQM-P, GDA and other parties. He is again standing for the same seat, renamed as NA-211 Mirpurkhas-I, against PPP’s Pir Aftab Hussain Shah Jilani.

The PPP will also have to deal with Shah and his son, Syed Shuja Muhammad Shah, on PS-47 and PS-46, respectively, though the party had managed to win those two seats in 2018. Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah and Noor Ahmed Bhurgari, both elected MPAs in 2018, will face off Shahs on PS-46 and PS-47.

Mirpurkhas city based constituency, PS-45 Mirpurkhas-I, has in the past elected MQM-P’s candidates five times since 1993. But in 2018 the PPP’s Hari Ram Kishori Lal grabbed that constituency for the first time in decades. In the upcoming polls, Zafar Ahmed Khan Kamali, who was elected MQM-P’s MPA from that seat in 2013, will try to reclaim his lost constituency from PPP’s Lal.

Son of former Sindh chief minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim, Arbab Inayatullah, is standing for PS-48 against the PPP’s Mir Tariq Ali Talpur, who was elected MPA in 2018 from the same area.
Tharparkar

The GDA, represented by former chief minister Arbab in Tharparkar, posed a tough challenge to the PPP in 2018. The party managed to secure only one provincial seat out of two seats of National Assembly and four of provincial assembly in that district. Arbab is again leading a strong campaign for his party, besides being himself a candidate for NA-215 Tharparkar-II.

But the GDA has changed its winning candidate for PS-52 Tharparkar-I Abdul Razzak Rahimo by giving the ticket to Sher Khan Samejo this time. Rahimo has been elevated to fight for NA-214 Tharparkar-I against Pir Ameer Ali Shah Jeelani, whose father late Pir Noor Muhammad Shah Jillani had won that seat in 2018. Ameer had succeeded his father after his death in a by-election.

Arbab Anwar Jabbar, Arbab Togachi, Fawad Razzaque and Arbab Zakaullah of the GDA have joined the electoral fray against the PPP’s Qasim Soomro, Sher Muhammad Bilalani and Arbab Lutfullah on PS-53, PS-54 and PS-55, respectively. All these PPP’s candidates had won in 2018 from their constituencies.