Women who won from the Quaid’s city

LAHORE: Former prime minister and slain Pakistan Peoples Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto possesses a unique record of being the first elected MNA ever from Karachi and Lahore.

Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan, which is also known as the city of Quaid has always been a centre of political activity and many noted political and religio-political figures of national history have got elected from here in the general elections between 1970 to 2018.

However, Benazir is the only female politician who not only won from two seats in the same general elections from the largest city of Pakistan, Karachi, and the second largest city of the country, Lahore, but also was the first woman even to get elected an MNA from these cities. She set this record in 1988 when she won from the elections from a Karachi constituency and a Lahore constituency. Never before in the history of these cities, any woman had won the National Assembly seat, though Farhat Rafique was elected an MPA from Lahore in 1985.

From NA-189, a seat of Karachi in the 1988 polls, Benazir contested the elections and won with a big margin against Islami Jamhuri Ittehad’s Jamshed Ahmad Khan. Benazir bagged 62,046 votes whereas Khan polled only around 10,000.

From Lahore, in the same general elections, she contested from NA-94 and defeated rival candidate Mian Umar Hayat. In the contest, Benazir polled around 53,000 votes while Hayat bagged around 43,000 votes.

Along with this record, Benazir is the only woman leader, and arguably the only politician so far, who received a historic reception from both Lahore and Karachi when she came back to the country after long exile.

She came to Lahore in 1986 and to Karachi in 2007.

The other woman who has got elected as MNA from Karachi is Khush Bakht Shujaat. She won as a ticket holder of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) from NA-250 in the 2008 general elections. From the same constituency in the 2002 elections, Nasreen Jaleel of the MQM also contested but lost the election after a close contest to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s Abdul Sattar Afghani. Nasreen, however, holds the distinction of being the first and only District Naib Nazim of Karachi which she became in 2005. She also later served as a senator.

The first woman who was elected MPA from Karachi is Fauzia Begum, the MQM ticket holder from then PS-79 in the 1993 elections. Bilqees Mukhtar of the MQM was also elected an MPA in 2002.

In 2013, Safiya Naz of the PPP was elected an MPA from Karachi.

Muneera Shakir, Rahila Tiwana, Naz Baloch and Irum Wahab have also contested the general elections from Karachi but could not succeed.