OF all electoral contests in Sindh, the showdown in Badin is going to be as exciting as it proved in 2015 local government polls and 2018 general elections, which had resulted in shocking upsets for the otherwise deeply-entrenched Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

Hence, the former ruling party has redoubled its efforts to reclaim the seats it had lost to its disgruntled leader Dr Zulfiqar Mirza’s spouse Dr Fehmida Mirza, as the couple have taken the field again along with their sons on the tickets of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) to repeat the history of the previous polls.

Before her Feb 8 electoral bout, Dr Fehmida is, however, made to direct her energies away from the active electioneering towards the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in order to get back her party’s electoral symbol ‘star’ following a litigation that ended up in rejection and then acceptance of the nomination forms of the senior Mirzas.

The past one decade has seen frenetic attempts by the PPP to knock its former diehards out and reclaim its lost forte but the party has so far faced defeat after defeat.

Zulfiqar Mirza parted ways with the PPP in 2011, but despite this, his son Hasnain Mirza had returned to the Sindh Assembly from Badin on a PPP ticket in 2013. The family proved their mettle in 2015 LG polls and then shocked the PPP by winning one NA and one PA seat each in July 2018 general elections from the platform of the GDA. The family looks poised to give a tough time to the PPP again on Feb 8.

Zulfiqar Mirza had himself lost his provincial seat, but his wife and son Hasnain became MNA and MPA, respectively. His second son, Hassam also lost to PPP’s Mir Ghulam Ali Talpur on NA-229.

Fehmida Mirza had won the national assembly seat, then numbered NA-230, by a narrow margin of 997 votes. She bagged 94,988 votes against 93,991 polled for PPP’s Rasool Bux Chandio. But she lost PS-72 by a thin difference of 915 votes to PPP’s Taj Mohammad. She got 36,517 while Taj obtained 37,432. Later, she won her case in an election tribunal when Chandio challenged her victory.

Likewise, out of five PA seats PPP won four. PPP’s Bashir Ahmed had trounced GDA’s Riaz Ahmed on PS-70; Mir Allah Bux Talpur won against GDA’s Mir Abdullah Khan; PS-72 was won by Hasnain Mirza against Syed Ali Bux Shah of PPP; Taj Mohammad beat Fehmida Mirza on PS-73 and Ismail Rahu defeated Zulfiqar Mirza in the 2018 general elections.

For PPP government things started taking a different turn in 2008 when Zulfiqar Mirza began criticising party policies and its coalition with MQM openly and finally ended up rocking the party’s boat through his explosives-laden August 2011 press conference.

He resigned from his seat and declared open war with all guns blazing against the party leadership. In his flurry of interviews afterwards, he termed PPP “a bunch of exploiters”. He had candidly admitted while parting ways with the PPP that Asif Zardari had indeed facilitated him in establishing his sugar mills in Badin. He still owned two mills.

A few years later, Mirzas caused the first upset in PPP’s stronghold during LG elections held in November 2015. The Mirza group equalled numbers in polls. His group and PPP won almost an even number of municipal committees in Badin and Matli.

Of the eight town committees four each went to them. In 68-member district council, PPP bagged 29 seats, Mirza group 25 and the rest went to PML-F, PML-N, Arbab Ghulam Rahim and independents. Hasnain was still PPP’s MPA when his parents had clinched an impressive victory in the LG polls.

The Feb 8 polls are most likely poised to be a repeat of 2018 elections with PPP versus GDA one-on-one contest though the ride for Mirzas has become bumpier this time as Fehmida Mirza is still struggling to obtain GDA’s symbol from ECP on NA-223 and PS-71 from where her son and covering candidate Hassam Mirza is also in the run. Hence, till she wins litigation Hassam is GDA’s candidate on NA-223 (Badin city).

On PS-71, PPP’s Taj Mohammad Mallah is fighting against Hassam and GDA’s Ameer Azad Panhwar is pitted against PPP’s Ismail Rahu on PS-72.

On NA-222 (Matli) Mir Ghulam Ali Talpur is facing GDA’s Hussain Bux Talpur.

On its three allied provincial seats, PPP’s Mohammad Halepoto is competing against GDA’s Mansoor Ali on PS-68; Mir Allah Bux Talpur is fighting for PS-69 against GDA’s Abdullah Talpur and PPP’s Arbab Ameer Amanullah is taking on GDA’s Hasnain Mirza for PS-70.

Mirzas are non-locals in Badin

Although Mirzas are not natives of Badin yet they managed to deal a major blow to PPP in its stronghold within a short span of time. Zulfiqar Mirza had come from Hyderabad’s oldest locality, Tando Thoro, where his father, Zafar Hussain Mirza, a retired Supreme Court justice, had lived. Dr Fehmida also belongs to Hyderabad’s Qazi family that owned the city’s famous cinema houses.

It was only after he established a sugar mill in Badin in late ’80s that he made inroads in the coastal town, initially for business activities. Later, PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto asked him to relocate to the town for political purposes. He then won an NA seat in 1993 in Badin for the first time. Since then there was no turning back for him.

Zulfiqar Mirza stayed away from constituency politics after 1993. In 2008, he won the polls on PS-57. As Mirzas left PPP, Ali Bux and his wife Yasmin Shah found it comfortable to join PPP in recent past.

In 2013 polls, Kamal Khan Chang, former district nazim of Badin, won NA-224, while Fehmida retained NA-225 and her son Hasnain won PS-57.

The couple kept winning polls from 1993 to 2008. Before Mirzas had descended on Badin’s political landscape, Halepotas used to lead PPP and win seats on the party’s ticket in 1985, 1988 and 1990.

Oil-rich but poor district

The oil-rich Badin’s is a long and painful saga of being hit by natural disasters like cyclones and heavy rainfall multiple times. Memories of Cyclone 2A of 1999 that led to deaths of 200 people and 2011’s torrential rains that spelt disaster are still fresh in peoples’ minds. Locals squarely blame the Left Bank Outfall Drain for being a major source of successive disasters in the tail-end district.

Last June, Badin escaped another disaster in the making as cyclone Biparjoy luckily changed its course and made landfall on the other side of the border.

Surrounded by several creeks, Badin is considered to be part of Indus delta, the world’s seventh largest. The district’s mainstay is agriculture though it is located at the tail-end of Indus river system.

Until recent past, Badin surpassed other areas in sugar cane cultivation hence five sugar factories were established in the district. Nizamanis, Mirzas, Talpurs, Halepotas, Chandios, and other families control between them 1,500-2,500 acres of farmland in the district, one way or another.

To find your constituency and location of your polling booth, SMS your NIC number (no spaces) to 8300. Once you know your constituency, visit the ECP website here for candidates.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2024

Header image: (From left) Fehmida Mirza, her spouse Dr Zulfiqar Mirza and their sons Hasnain and Hassam.