NA-242: An overview of Karachi's smallest but most diversified constituency

KARACHI: Following revised delimitation, Karachi has 21 National Assembly seats and one of the constituencies in district East is the smallest due to less number of registered voters.

NA-242’s total number of registered voters stands at 183,373, which is the least among all other constituencies of the city.

After renewed delimitation, the city now has three more seats of the assemblies, one for National Assembly and two for Sindh Assembly, taking the total number of seats in the metropolis to 21 (NA) and 44 (PA), respectively.

Following delimitation in Karachi Division, the highly populated District West has now the highest number of seats, which are five for the NA and 11 for the provincial assembly. Residents of District South will now vote for two national and five provincial assembly seats, while District Central has four NA and eight provincial assembly seats. Three NA and five provincial assembly constituencies lie in District Malir, whereas, District Korangi has three NA and seven provincial assembly seats. In District East lie four NA and eight provincial assembly constituencies.

In NA-242, the Election Commission of Pakistan has set up  only 98 polling stations due to lesser number of registered voters.

The areas which fall under the constituency include Sachal Goth, Al-Asif Square, New Sabzi Mandi, Al-Azhar Garden, Chapal Sun City, PCSIR, KDA Society, Quetta Colony, Ahsanabad, Laasi Goth and Kiran Hospital.

While at least 19 candidates are in the run – prominent among them are Asadullah Bhutto of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, Saif-ur-Rahman of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Mohammad Iqbal Sand of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Kishwar Zehra of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan, Hassan Sabir of the Pak Sarzameen Party, Noorullah Achakzai of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Syed Mohammad Waqas Hashmi of the Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan, Noorullah of the Awami National Party and Sharafat Khan of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

The past election history of the constituency has been dissimilar. In 2002, MMA’s Mr Bhutto had won the elections [when it was NA-253] by getting 28,840 votes; while MQM’s Haider Abbas Rizvi won the seat in 2008 and bagged 96,973 votes and Muzammil Qureshi of the same party was elected in 2013 by grabbing 101,386 votes.