Karachi: The next mayor of Karachi will not be elected through the system of direct election, according to an amendment passed by the Sindh government.
Instead, the city council members will vote for the next mayor of Karachi.
The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf governments in Islamabad, Punjab, and Khyber Pakthunkhwa wanted mayor elections in major cities to be held through a direct vote.
The Pakistan People’s Party government in Sindh has made its intention clear that an indirect voting system would be used to elect the mayor at a stormy session of the Assembly where the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill-2021 has been passed amid a protest by opposition legislators. The Opposition members wanted to see copies of the amendment bill beforehand so that they could go through its contents to suggest improvements.
Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani said the direct election was not possible in Karachi due to sheer size of the city.
He said that Karachi with 22 constituencies of the National Assembly, it would be a difficult task to run the election campaign. The minister said that running the mayoral election campaign in the entire city by a single candidate was humanly impossible. Likewise, the elections of prime minister and chief ministers of the provinces were held indirectly in the country.
With over 15 million population, Karachi is the largest city in Pakistan and the twelfth-largest city in the world. It is the capital of the Pakistani province of Sindh. Ranked as a beta-global city, it is Pakistan's premier industrial and financial centre, with an estimated GDP of $164 billion as of 2019.
