Tug of war

THE timing may be questioned, but the issue is not new. The PPP and the MQM-P are once again engaging in their old tug of war over who ‘owns’ Karachi, using bombast to stake their claims. The Sindh Assembly last Saturday passed a resolution, tabled by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, to condemn “any conspiracy aimed at the division of Sindh or the creation of a separate province comprising Karachi”. The resolution affirmed that Karachi shall “forever remain” an integral part of Sindh. The MQM leadership protested at the resolution during its passage, and convened especially to declare it an “attack on the federation”. “This [resolution] challenged Pakistan, its Constitution, its law and its state,” an MQM leader declared at the party’s press conference. It was remarkable that the leaders of the MQM’s component factions were able to come together on the matter, given the bitter infighting the party — whose years of rule in Karachi yielded little more than a few flyovers — has seen in recent months.

The truth is that the Constitution does provide a route to creating new provinces, but this requires the approval of two-thirds of the respective provincial assembly. There seems to be no appetite within the Sindh Assembly for such a move, and, therefore, it is inexplicable why the PPP brought the matter up and why the MQM has taken umbrage to it. The latter may simply be using the matter to prop up its sagging relevance, as it is wont to do, but the Sindh government, too, must acknowledge why the ‘Karachi province’ issue keeps raising its head. Despite being Pakistan’s largest and arguably most important commercial centre, Karachi these days does not hold a candle to the country’s second-largest city, Lahore. Karachi is terribly neglected and misgoverned in comparison to the Punjab capital, for which the Sindh government is rightly blamed. Those who claim ‘ownership’ of Karachi merely wish to see it freed of the malicious systems that have entrapped it in the cycle of poor governance and urban decay. A better solution for the city lies in the implementation of a more robust local government system, but here, too, the Sindh government deserves blame for preventing such a system from taking root. Karachi is, indeed, an inseparable part and the jewel of Sindh. It is a shame that it does not look the part.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2026

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