It used to be that if you went to Baldia, you were on Farooq Dada’s turf. The MQM muscleman may have been summarily dispatched to a higher plane in 1995 in a police encounter but his spirit lingered on in name. For years no other party’s candidate stood a chance in this part of Karachi. All that changed this April. Farooq Dada’s legacy finally ran out in the by-election held in Baldia Town for its NA-249 seat. The MQM came in sixth with 7,511 votes. With this, the MQM solidified a spectacular losing streak: it has lost the last four out of five by-elections in Karachi. LOST PS-114 (Mehmoodabad)WON PS-94 (Landhi)LOST PS-88 (Malir)LOST NA-243 (Gulshan-e-Iqbal) LOST NA-249 (Baldia) .
Who will shine in NA-249?
With litany of promises made by candidates, this neglected area turns into a political battleground for a by-election
By-election being held on seat that fell vacant after death of PPP MPA.
PHOTO: FILE
KARACHI:
In Karachi’s Baldia Town area, barefoot children, carrying jerry cans, jumping over uncovered manholes without skipping a beat and racing their peers on narrow, uneven and dirty roads is the norm. All around, there are remnants of schools, parks and playgrounds with broken boundary walls that seem to be propped up by piles of garbage - an equally commonplace sight across the NA-249 constituency.
KARACHI: A tough contest is expected among candidates of major political parties contesting the by-election in a water-starved Karachi National Assembly constituency, NA-249, polling for which is going to be held on Thursday (tomorrow).
NA-249, Karachi West II, was created in 2018 by amalgamating areas that previously fell in two NA constituencies (NA-239 and NA-240) during three general elections held from 2002 to 2013.
Before the creation of this constituency, NA-240 was considered to be a stronghold of the then Altaf Hussain-led Muttahida Qaumi Movement as an overwhelming majority of Urdu-speaking voters lived there. In the delimitation for the 2018 election, areas from old NA-239 and NA-240, said to be dominated by people of other ethnic backgrounds, were merged to form the NA-249 constituency.