It’s a nail-biting wrap to Karachi’s local government elections. The PPP appeared to be in the lead by Tuesday but then it lost two UCs to the Jamaat-e-Islami when results were reviewed, changing party strengths in the City Council.

The original results suggested that the PPP had won 93 UCs. The Jamaat-e-Islami won 86 UCs and the PTI came third with 40 UCs. However, during the review of the results forms, JI candidates were declared winners in Orangi Town’s UC 6 and Safoora Town’s UC 1. This leaves the PPP with 91 and JI with 85 seats.

The Election Commission finalised results for Karachi’s seven districts around 10:30pm Monday – over 28 hours after voting ended. No single political party emerged with a clean majority in the City Council to be able to name a mayor. And so a coalition will have to be cobbled together to elect one.

A coalition is a loose term for a temporary alliance to achieve a political goal.

The MQMP exited the election in a huff but faction MQM Haqiqi bagged one seat. PML-Nawaz has seven seats and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) won three seats. Newest entrant, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) has two.

Three independent candidates were also elected UC chairpersons.

The City Council is made up of 246 Union Councils. The election took place for 235 UC chairpersons and it was postponed in 11 UCs after some of the candidates passed away after submitting their nomination papers. The election was originally supposed to take place in July 2022 but it was rescheduled multiple times due to floods and worries over outbreaks of violence.

The results released Monday evening were for 235 UCs that went to the polls.

Reserved seats

The direct election was held on 235 seats in the City Council but there are another 121 seats which are reserved or set aside for women, youth, laborers, differently-abled people, khwaja sira, and minorities. They will be proportionally allotted to political parties winning UCs.

The PPP will get the highest number of reserved seats since it has won the highest number of directly elected constituencies. Its total number was to swell to 142. However, this may change after two UCs went to JI during the review.

The JI was to likely get a total of 133 seats and the PTI 60. The PMLN, JUI, and TLP will see their total number of seats rise to 9, 4, and 3, respectively.

This table shows the likely position of each party after adding on the reserved City Council seats. The election to the remaining 11 constituencies will change the final tally.

Hence, our final parliament donut for Karachi city council will look like this after adding reserved seats. However, a word of caution: This is only a preliminary estimate based on the Sindh Local Government Act 2021 and not the official seat allocation approved by the ECP.

Who could be Karachi’s mayor?

There is a possibility that PPP and JI could control the City Council in Karachi by forming an alliance. Another option is for the JI and PTI to gang up against the PPP. JI’s Hafiz Naeemur Rehman is a strong contender for the mayorship. The PPP may field Murtaza Wahab, who was the Karachi Administrator until recently, or Saeed Ghani.

The JI and PPP will control most of the Town Municipal Committees (TMCs) in Karachi’s 25 towns, the results indicated.

To a question while meeting the media, CM Murad Ali Shah said Monday that the government would cooperate with the “to be elected” Mayor of Karachi. “I am sure the new Mayor would not cry for want of power but would focus to serve the people of this city and its people,” he said and added the local bodies have all the powers they need to serve the people.

The CM said he made a last ditch effort to persuade the MQM-P to stand. “When a political party chooses to boycott the election means it is creating a vacuum that other parties fill in,” he said. Once the PPP had boycotted the election held on a non-party basis [during the Zia regime] but it caused a huge political loss.

He said his government had passed the local government law under which towns were created in the city. This was done, he said, in consultation with all stakeholders.

Reaction to delayed results

All three leading parties, the PPP, JI and PTI, were unhappy about the ECP delaying the results. PPP’s Saeed Ghani warned Sunday night that this could cast a pall over the transparency of the electoral process.

The chief minister talked to the Election Commissioner, Sindh. “Some people are giving the impression that the provincial government is causing a delay in the results,” Murad Ali Shah said. “As a matter of fact, my government has nothing to do with counting and releasing results.”

The CM said the election commission explained that Presiding Officers were counting the results twice, and this was causing the delay.

On Monday morning, JI’s Hafiz Naeemur Rehman and PTI’s Ali Zaidi held separate press conferences to question the delay. The PTI rejected the election process and accused the ECP of rigging (Read more on our Urdu website here).

Activists from both JI and PTI protested outside the offices of Returning Officers (ROs) who are responsible for announcing the results.

Polling ended at 5pm on Sunday and the count began a little later as voters inside the polling stations were allowed to continue voting. This is the rule.

The Election Commission of Pakistan extended polling time for a select few polling stations where the start had been delayed in the morning, Aaj News correspondent Naveed Akbar reported from Islamabad. The additional time was allowed in exact proportion to the delay in the morning, he said.

Results in detail

Aaj News took the lead in broadcasting the first result. In Chanesar Goth Town of district East, PPP’s Aurangzaib Taj led for UC chairman and JI’s Umar Farooq trailed behind, TV reported as soon as the clock struck 6pm.

The TV collected and broadcasted the results as soon as they are declared. The website is publishing them here.

In Sunday’s polls, voters elected UC chairmen who will be members of the City Council. They and their colleagues on reserved seats in turn will elect the mayor of the city.

Read more on how your vote elects Karachi’s next mayor

Voters have also elected members to Town Municipal Committees (TMCs) for Karachi’s 25 towns. These members will elect town nazims. We have created a bar chart of each party’s position in all 25 towns. If a party leads the bar chart, let’s say, in Liaquatabad Town, it will control the TMC for that town.

At least one member to the city council and one member to Ibrahim Hyderi TMC were elected unopposed. Ibrahim Moosani was elected chairman and Mohammad Rafiq Dawood the vice chairman in UC10 Rehri in Malir district.

The following table provides the result on candidates who are leading the polls.

ECP defends delay

The country’s top electoral authority, Election Commission of Pakistan, defended the delay in the announcement of results.

“Local bodies’ polls are the most complicated when it comes to compiling results. The Election Commission is performing its duty amicably,” Provincial Election Commissioner Sindh Ejaz Anwar Chohan said while talking to reporters at the ECP’s provincial headquarters on Monday.

He ruled out any “deliberate move” to delay the vote-counting process.

“Around 57 returning officers are performing duties round the clock without a break,” he said. Chohan was of the view that counting votes and compiling results were two different things.

“All these tasks are being performed manually. The local bodies’ elections are always different from general polls. One should not compare them,” he added.

The ECP uses RMS or a Results Management System for national and provincial elections, but the electoral body is not going to use RMS to announce the LG election results, spokesperson Quratulain told Aaj News reporter Afzal Javed in Islamabad.

The results will be announced by the presiding officers, she said.

Voter sentiment

Aaj News reporters and anchors (who were pulled out of the studios and sent into the field) tried to gain a loose sense of sentiment on the ground by speaking to as many voters as they could. This is not exactly like an exit poll widely conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom, but it did offer us some clues.

Conversation with voters in Malir district suggested that the PPP was leading the polls with the JI trailing closely behind, reported Anusha Jafri. This came as no surprise as Malir has traditionally been pro-PPP.

In other areas, voter turnout was initially comparatively thin and apparently MQMP’s call for a boycott worked. More women voters turned up at polling stations than men.

While the PPP, PTI and JI actively campaigned, social media posts indicated that people were also interested in the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) as a political party.

Aaj News extensively covered the polls throughout the day with a big team of anchors and reporters in the field.