KARACHI: As the Oct 14 by-election is fast approaching, the election festivity in a Karachi National Assembly constituency, NA-243, is nowhere to be seen since major contesting parties have not bothered to follow the traditional practices for creating an election fever to muster support of the people for their candidates.

The NA-243 constituency (Karachi East II) fell vacant when Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan, who was elected from five NA constituencies — NA-35 Bannu, NA-53 Islamabad, NA-95 Mianwali, NA-131 Lahore and NA-243 Karachi — decided to retain his home constituency Mianwali.

Imran Khan has vacated the seat that covers areas of Gulshan, Gulistan-i-Jauhar

Mr Khan had secured 91,373 votes in the July 25 elections against Syed Ali Raza Abidi of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan who bagged 24,373 votes. Total 165,298 votes out of 401,833 were cast.

22 aspirants in the run

A total of 22 candidates are contesting the by-election scheduled to be held on Oct 14.

They include Alamgir Khan (PTI), Aamir Waliuddin Chishti (MQM-P), Hakim Ali (Pakistan Peoples Party), Sharafat Ali (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz), Syed Asif Hasnain (Pak Sarzameen Party), Dr Syed Nawaz Al-Huda (Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan), Naeem Akhtar (Jamaat-i-Islami) and 15 independent candidates.

A total of 216 polling stations with 864 polling booths have been set up for the by-election. Around 2,160 election staff, including 216 presiding officers, would conduct the election.

The constituency comprises of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar and Bahadurabad areas.

The MQM’s Haider Abbas Rizvi and Muzammil Qureshi had won elections in 2008 and 2013, respectively, from the old constituency of NA-253.

But keeping in view the results of general elections and the likely split of votes between the MQM-P and PSP, it appears that PTI’s Alamgir Khan has bright chances.

Enthusiasm missing from all sides

Since the announcement of by-poll schedule, the election campaign remained lacklustre for want of fervour and enthusiasm among activists as if the parties — instead of launching a vigorous campaign — were relying on display of banners, posters and party flags on electric poles for canvassing.

Many of the candidates have not even bothered to launch a door-to-door campaign.

The mode of campaigning has remained quite different from the past practices of organising public meetings and rallies in addition to corner meetings and door-to-door contacts, distribution of pamphlets etc.

So far, none of the candidates have held any major public meeting or taken out big rallies, except staging small events and using pickup trucks decorated with life-size portraits of party leaders and the candidates, and fitted with loudspeakers relaying party songs.

According to analysts, the opposition parties in view of their past experiences have fielded candidates to prevent giving the PTI an open field.

But as far as the MQM-P is concerned, its leadership appears quite hopeful to get back the seat which they lost to Prime Minister Khan in the July 25 election.

They said that the PTI government instead of providing relief to the masses further burdened them with rising prices of essential commodities, including gas and CNG.

The MQM-P now expects that those party supporters who, for one reason or the other, had cast their vote for the PTI will now return to the MQM hoping that the party could deliver under the changed political circumstances.

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2018