NA-246: Where lies the home of MQM, few other parties field candidates

Nabeel Gabol, who recently joined the party, will be contesting against PTI, PPP and JI.

KARACHI:

Home to one of the city’s most influential political party - the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) - NA-246 is no doubt a constituency where few other parties dared to field their candidates.

Only the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) have decided to contest this national assembly seat, where lies the home of MQM chief Altaf Hussain, Nine Zero, which now serves as the party’s headquarters.

All the roads leading up to Nine Zero are barricaded; the security has been further tightened following last week’s bomb blast in the vicinity. As soon as you approach the first barrier after Mukka Chowk, two armed men carrying walkie talkies stop your car and ask for ID. Once they receive confirmation that you are expected at one of the homes inside, the barriers are lifted and you are allowed to go through.



The narrow lanes of Azizabad are lined with traditional streetlights, where few residents worry about muggers and pickpockets. At night, the whole neighbourhood lights up with young children gathered outside the several grocery stores lining the road. Surrounded by the city’s troubled neighbourhoods, the law and order situation in this constituency hardly goes out of control.

The number of parks and other development projects by the party will ensure that it emerges victorious once again, said an MQM sympathiser. He felt that the overwhelmingly Urdu-speaking population of the constituency also tilts the outcome of the elections in favour of the MQM.

Nevertheless, the MQM has made sure it always fields non-Urdu-speaking candidates on this seat. In 2002, the party chose Haji Azizullah Brohi - a Sindhi-speaking Baloch - to contest the seat, and this time too, it has chosen Nabeel Gabol, who has been associated with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in its Baloch-majority Lyari stronghold. The odds are, however, not entirely in its favour. Political experts believe that the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) will win back the voters who switched allegiance in the last elections that JI boycotted.

Khalid Shahenshah’s area

The slain Pakistan Peoples Party loyalist, Khalid Shahenshah, was the only candidate in this constituency who was given a free rein to carry out his 2002 election campaign in this MQM stronghold. Shahenshah was an active member of the Peoples Student Federation and was known in the 1980s for his activism and bravery.

The myth of alKaram Square

AlKaram Square is also part of this constituency. Commonly referred to as ‘98’, alKaram Square is a residential building of one- to two-bedroom apartments that served as the MQM headquarters before Nine Zero. During the 1990s operation by the army, these apartments were the first to be targeted.



A journalist recalled how this area became an ethnic no-go area during the 90s and, to this day, residents are scared of walking past the railway tracks at night - believing that the ghosts of the people murdered here still stalk lone pedestrians.

Even to this day, the large bullet holes are visible on the buildings’ facade. The lower levels of the building are now taken up by printing businesses, making it the third largest printing hub of the city.

Provincial seats

The constituency includes two provincial seats - PS-105 and PS-106. There are seven candidates contesting PS-106 while nine are there to contest PS-105.

According to the Election Commission of Pakistan, the total population of PS-105 is 239,999 and the population of PS-106 is roughly the same at 244,583. In both constituencies, the number of male registered voters is higher than female.

Down memory lane

When the Muttahida Qaumi Movement was still emerging in the political arena in 1996, a resident of Karim Centre near Bhaijan Chowk, Zulfiqar Ali, recalls MQM chief Altaf Hussain requesting the residents to light up diyas on their balconies.

A senior trade union leader and retired government servant, Ali remembered how thousands of candles and diyas were lit up only in this area. “We can say that was MQM’s time, but now the situation has changed.”

People now want change, he said, adding that the main reason why the MQM emerged was because the Jamaat-i-Islami was performing badly. “But people are fed up again of the soaring prices, the worsening law and order situation and the increase in targeted killings,” he pointed out. “They just want change.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 9^th, 2013.