Delimitation hearings: Complaints pile up as date for local bodies elections nears

“The government has drawn boundaries in a way to divide the votes of its political opponents,” says Jala Mehmood...

HYDERABAD:

With nearly 20 days to the local government elections, complaints kept pouring in at the hearings by the appellate cell of Hyderabad Commissioner Jamal Mustafa Syed.

The hearings, which will continue till November 8, are being held in each of the 10 districts in the Hyderabad division. The remonstrance was such that the protesters in Tando Muhammad Khan district laid a siege outside the deputy commissioner office and padlocked its doors for three hours.

A total of 34 objections were filed from the district, out of which 22 were rejected at the hearing on Tuesday. For the remaining, the commissioner directed the DC to review the process. The district has been divided in a municipal committee and a district council.

“Tando Sain Dad is just a kilometre away from Tando Muhammad Khan but it has been made part of the Raju Nizamani area which is 14-km away,” claimed former Naib Nazim Pir Ashfaq Jan Sarhindi who led the siege. Sarhindi and his supporters have also called a strike in the district today.

Hyderabad

The demand by Qaumi Awami Tehreek and other complainants for making the three urban tehsils of the district part of the municipal corporation was rejected at the appellate hearing on Wednesday. The commissioner insisted that the district will be administered through three municipal systems - City and Latifabad tehsils through the municipal corporation while the remaining two tehsils as municipal committee and district council.

Around 51 objections were filed from Hyderabad while the commissioner ordered the DC Nawaz Soho to address only 14 of them, most of which were about City and Latifabad tehsils. In one of the objections concerning Qasimabad, a complainant Altaf Khaskheli pointed out that the tehsils population was wrongly shown as 109,846 based on the 1998 census. “We added up the [population] numbers from each of the 29 wards in Qasimabad [as contained in the delimitation lists] and the total population was calculated at 121,326,” Khaskheli told The Express Tribune.

Jamshoro

“The government has drawn boundaries in a way to divide the votes of its political opponents,” alleged Syed Jala Mehmood Shah, president of Sindh United Party, who bagged the second highest votes, 58,528, in the general elections in NA-231 Jamshoro. Shah said that he will challenge the delimitation in Jamshoro in the Sindh High Court.

Malik Changez Khan of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz said that even the education city in Jamshoro, where three universities and several schools and colleges exist, has been made part of the rural administration.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 8^th,2013.