Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has decided to support the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) candidate Hafiz Naeemur Rehman in the election for Karachi mayor slot.
A spokesperson of the Imran Khan-led party announced the development, stressing on transparent elections. He also accused the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of pre-poll rigging, claiming that elected local representatives were being abducted through Sindh police.
Saying the PPP had run away from the local government elections for four times, the spokesperson alleged that now they wanted to hold the mayor election in hasten due to their vested interests.
The PTI spokesperson said elected representatives were being abducted before their oath ceremony, adding that the party had approached the court on this matter. He said that the PPP and MQM-Pakistan did not want to accept the public mandate.
Meanwhile, the PPP has approved the name of Murtaza Wahab for the slot of the Karachi mayor.
In the recently concluded Karachi local bodies polls, PPP emerged as the largest party but it failed to secure a simple majority of 179 votes needed for the seat of Karachi mayor.
PPP will need at least 22 seats even after an alliance with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
In terms of the number of seats, PPP is the largest party in Karachi with 98 seats so far, followed by Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) with 89 seats and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) with 42 seats; however, no party has a simple majority.
According to political experts, prospects of putting forward the next mayor of Karachi are bright; however, given that a party needs at least 124 seats (reserved seats not included) in the city council to secure the desired majority for winning the mayoral poll, the party will have to form alliances.
