KARACHI: Backed by the Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, the local administration on Monday demolished three more Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) offices in a move that Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah described as government’s campaign against encroachments.

Two MQM unit offices (101 and 102), which the officials said were illegally built on the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation land in Malir, were razed with the help of heavy machinery in the early hours of Monday morning.

“The action was in line with the government decision to remove all such structures,” said a municipal official. “This is first action of its kind in our area but it will continue as we have identified more such structures in Malir, which were either raised on government land or encroachment area. The Rangers were there only for security reasons.”

In a similar move, a unit office of the party was bulldozed in Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s block 16 where the authorities with heavy contingent of the police and Rangers brought the old structure down within a few minutes. The officials said the unit office was built on KMC land. “It was built inside the Mahmood Ghaznavi Park,” an official said.

Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah in a TV show admitted that the action was being taken on his orders, as he wanted every single encroachment in the city removed at the earliest. “It’s not against the MQM,” he said in Geo News show ‘Capital Talk’. “It’s against encroachment and illegal structure. The people should know that we have even bulldozed a Pakistan Peoples Party office in Karachi under the same campaign. It’s all being done with my consent, as we have decided to remove all encroachments and illegal structures from Karachi. Party offices which have been built legally have not been touched,” he explained.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2016