HYDERABAD: As electioneering in different wards of the Cantonment Board Hyderabad (CBH) picks up, candidates vying for seats of councillors get a taste of problems their voters have to face in everyday life living within the jurisdiction of a cantonment.

The CBH polls to be held after a gap of around 17 years will see some interesting contests as sitting and former parliamentarians are campaigning for their parties to drum up support for their candidates.

For instance, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) that is eyeing the office of vice-president in the CBH has tasked its parliamentarians to visit all constituencies.

MNA Syed Waseem Hussain, MPAs Sabir Qaimkhani, Rashid Khilji, Rana Ansar and local office-bearers of the party are trying to reach every household to seek support for the party’s candidates.

The candidates who will represent katchiabadis are poised to raise issues of civic problems at the CBH which often chooses to ignore its slum areas, arguing it is not responsible to provide them civic amenities since it does not recover any tax from these areas. The residents of slums and villages have over the years obtained connections of water supply, electricity or gas on their own.

“Our argument is; what sort of facilities the CBH is providing to inhabitants of these slums for which the board wants to recover taxes. When no amenities are provided how can you levy tax. Let the CBH provide the facilities first and then levy taxes,” said Dr Illahi Bux, a well known homeopath doctor of the city.

He lives in Defence area and is in the run for councillor’s seat from ward-7 that covers posh areas, villages and katchiabadis.

Mr Bux is disturbed at the board’s uncanny knack of denying access to people. “Just imagine, even I as a candidate wasn’t allowed to enter the cantonment premises on Sunday for some inexplicable reason although election work continues even on holidays as per rules of the Election Commission of Pakistan. It shows what predicament an ordinary katchiabadi or village dweller has to undergo daily,” he said.

He said he had to turn to the ECP to obtain different documents after the CBH refused to give him without any plausible justification.

Kazi Ashad, a builder, is vying for wrad-7. He belongs to Qazi family which owns popular cinema houses (now converted into plazas) in the city and Sindhi language newspapers.

An articulate Ashad echoed similar concerns. “I come across heaps of garbage in villages and katchiabadis I am visiting regularly,” he said.

He said the CBH had created wards with uneven number of voters on the basis of a faulty argument. The CBH was run by nominated members, who did not have any concern for the community they did not represent so they were least bothered about their problems, he said.

“For example, more wards can be created out of ward-10 which has 11,000 or so voters,” he said, adding it reflected class-based mindset that huge population remained less represented. This needed to be changed in the CBH to get rid of class-based system, he added.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Syed Ahmed Rashid advocate who is staking claim in ward-7 likened the state of civic conditions in the peon colony to animals’ den. “I feel as if I am witnessing the 16th century France. Why doesn’t the CBH grant lease to the population that is its registered voter. Lease their property and then claim taxes from them which they are willing to pay,” said Mr Rashid.

PPP backed candidates acutely feel absence of their district party president, Zahid Bhurgari, who has opted for Umrah at this crucial time though he usually went on Umrah trip during Ramazan.

Resentment is clearly visible among PPP candidates and supporters since Bhurgari has remained a former councillor and vice-president of the CBH in 80s and 90s and was even elected MPA from the area. He therefore holds considerable influence over voters.

MQM’s Jamil Rizvi, a factory employee, is contesting in ward-10 which has the largest number of voters i.e. 11,028 out of total 40,245 registered voters.

Mr Rizvi saw non-existent sewerage system and unavailability of drinking water as major problems, which severely affected population of the ward.

“All other problems issued forth from these problems,” said 60-year-old Rizvi, who is pitted against PPP’s Adnan Shah. “Just let us win election and then we will take up these issues in CBH which has been without people’s representation for 17 years,” he said.

The stage is all set for a very interesting trilateral contest in ward-4 between PPP’s Ibrahim Qureshi, independent Abdul Rehman Pathan and MQM’s Moiz Bohri.

It is more of an indirect electoral fight between two old friends and now (political) foes, Ilyas Qureshi and Rasheed Pathan, than their real brothers Ibrahim Qureshi and Rehman Pathan.

Pathan, a retired SSGC employee, is heavily relying on religious minorities’ vote in sweepers colony in addition to others.

Qureshi accuses CBH hospital’s medical superintendent Dr Fareed Sheikh of threatening voters belonging to minorities with premature retirement on medical grounds just to seek support for his rival candidate Pathan whom Sheikh is backing. Qureshi has sent letters to authorities concerned, seeking their intervention.

PPP general secretary and Sindh fisheries minister Jam Khan Shoro has issued a strong worded statement against Sheikh, demanding his removal from the post of MS in the CBH hospital.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2015

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