KARACHI: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on Tuesday announced not to take part in the election on a vacant Senate seat from Sindh that will be held today.
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) .