KARACHI: As many as 118 councillors, 55 of them belonging to Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and 63 to Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), who were elected on seats reserved for women, labourers, minorities, youth, disabled and transgender persons of the Karachi Metropolitan Corpora­tion’s City Council took oath on Wednesday.

There are a total of 121 reserved seats in the City Council and two members of the PPP — Noor Jahan and Laila Parveen — and one member of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Iqbal Bano, were absent in the oath-taking ceremony.

Karachi Commissioner Muhammed Iqbal Memon administered the oath of the candidates who were successful on the reserved seats in the City Council.

Immediately after the recitation of the Holy Quran for the swearing-in ceremony, Qazi Sadruddin, a JI member, raised an objection that one of the members was a resident of a cantonment board and was not eligible to be elected as a member of the City Council. He demanded that the oath of the member should be stopped until his documents were scrutinised.

The commissioner passed the microphone to the municipal commissioner to give a reply to this objection, but the JI members refused to listen to him, asking the commissioner to give the answer as he was presiding over the oath-taking ceremony.

Amid the JI’s protest, KMC official Jameel Farooqui told them that the swearing-in of any member could not be stopped. Later, the commissioner started taking oath from the members.

Meanwhile, similar oath-taking ceremonies were also held for the councillors elected on reserved seats in six categories in 25 towns of the metropolis.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2023