HYDERABAD: For the first time in the history of the Cantonment Board Hyderabad (CBH), the Muttahida Qaumi Movement has staked its claim to the important but mostly ceremonial office of vice president after having secured a simple majority in the recently held election.

Until this day, the seat has always gone to a Pakistan Peoples Party-backed nominee. The MQM will be a new face on the board that is to be presided over by the sitting station commander in his capacity as president of the CBH.

The number of seats secured by the MQM is most likely to increase if more wards are created in the slum areas of Latifabad No 12 which is now part of ward-10 of the CBH. The area is a stronghold of the MQM and forms part of constituencies of two provincial and one National Assembly seats the party has been winning since 1988.

The party had fielded three new faces it described as Hamdard (sympathisers) in the CBH election. Two of them, Iqbal Memon (ward-5) and Jamil Rizvi (ward-10), won their seats but the third, Moiz Abbas, lost in ward-4.

Iqbal Memon and Jamil Rizvi beat PPP’s Nadeem Ahmed and Adnan Shah, respectively. The party managed to wrest from the PPP ward-5 seat considered to be a stronghold of the PPP as the area falls within PS-47 (Qasimabad) constituency which the PPP has been winning since it was created under new delimitation in 2002.

Wards 4 and 5 used to be part of old ward-2. The MQM had challenged the CBH’s delimitation in ward-10 which started from Katcha Qilla (Shah Faisal and Mumtaz colonies) in city taluka and ended in unit-12 of Latifabad taluka. But a sessions court rejected the party’s plea.

The party believed that given the ratio of registered voters divided across rest of the wards, the wrard-10 highly qualified to be divided further.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf put up a poor show as the party failed to make any gains in election despite fielding two candidates: Ajmal Shah in ward-2 and Syed Ahmed Rashid in ward-7. A PTI-backed candidate had though secured a sizeable number of votes in the 2013 general election in PS-47 constituency that covers ward-7.

It is not yet clear how many reserved seats are to be allocated to the CBH but according to an officer of the Election Commission of Pakistan things will get clear in a day or two because different number of reserved seats for the categories of women, youth, peasant, labourer and minority are in the pipeline which will be given to different cantonments across the country.

Earlier, only one minority candidate used to be elected in CBH. The office of the vice president was previously held by Saleem Akbar Brohi and before him Zahid Bhurgari of the PPP. Consolidation of votes in CBH will take place on Monday.

Besides providing civilian population an opportunity to send their representatives to the military dominated body, the CBH contest has also brought to the fore internal wrangling in the local chapter of the PPP.

Party supporters and candidates blame party leadership for ditching them in the election. District party president and former MPA elected from the area Zahid Bhurgari opted for Umrah while PPP general secretary and provincial minister Jam Khan Shoro (elected from PS-47 in the last polls) kept away from campaigning, though he did pay post-polls visit to PPP’s candidate Ibrahim Qureshi on Saturday evening.

The party cadre attributed their defeat to local leaders’ indifference and they particularly raised the name of Pervez Ansari, an old resident of that part of Saddar lost by PPP candidates.

Ansari was also conspicuously absent from electioneering although he had remained the party’s general secretary and later an special assistant to the chief minister.

To put it in the words of veteran PPP activist Ilyas Qureshi, brother of Ibrahim Qureshi who lost to Abdul Rehman Pathan in ward-4, and close friend of Zahid Bhurgari: “We faced two issues during election; Dr Farid Shaikh’s influence over voters working against our candidate and absence of Bhurgari”.

He continued: “Is this the way to support party candidates? Pervez Ansari is an old resident of the constituency, but he looked the other way while we campaigned for our candidates while Jam Khan [party general secretary] kept from electioneering over some legal issues”.

A tough contest in ward-4 which ultimately led to registration of a case under Anti Terrorism Act (ATA) on Sunday against CBH officer Dr Farid Sheikh, councillor- elect Abdul Rehman Pathan and others, had been a foregone conclusion since the election schedule was announced. Pathan’s family who had been closely associated with PPP till 2013 had quit the party and supported PTI during last general election.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2015

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