WITH the war in the Middle East, Karachi’s strategic importance has once again come to the fore. Recent data shared by the Karachi Port Trust revealed that the Karachi Port handled at least 8,313 containers in March 2026, exceeding the total volume handled in 2025. While Karachi’s location and its two deep-water ports have often underscored its immense potential, successive governments have failed to transform it into a modern metropolis.
Consider the Red Line BRT Project: slated to be completed in 2022, the project’s delay epitomises the city’s abysmal governance. Writing for these pages , former provincial minister Younus Dagha bemoaned that “Since 2012, the federal government completed approximately 90 [kilometres] of BRT length, Punjab around 95km (with additional projects of 78km underway), KP 27km, while Sindh has completed only 3.9km in the past 14 years. Hence the rate of implementation of the [Karachi Transportation Improvement Project] since 2012 by the Sindh government has been 0.28km per year. At this rate, it will take around 535 years to complete the remaining 150km of KTIP, which was to be completed in 2030.”
Seven years after the Red Line BRT’s initiation, the government recently terminated the contract awarded to a private contractor and handed over a segment of the project to the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO).
While the decision’s impact is yet to be seen, residents around Karachi’s University Road have reported a visible improvement in the pace of work. Contemporaneous with the FWO taking over, the provincial government too has sprung into action, as evident from the chief minister’s flurry of visits to the site of the project’s construction. Nonetheless, the provincial government’s newfound focus on Karachi follows reports about the federal government’s concerns about Karachi’s affairs and rumours about the ‘28th Constitutional Amendment’ focusing on Karachi’s dysfunctional governance.
Rumours about a 28th Amendment focus on Karachi.
Such belated efforts, however, only reinforce the necessity of revamping Karachi’s political structure, given that the fear of an impending amendment has achieved that which the body politic could not. With concerns about Karachi’s population being perennially undercounted in successive censuses, the solution to its challenges lies outside its current governance and political paradigm.
The 18th Amendment and the elusive dream of decentralisation: While the 18th Amendment had envisaged the devolution of powers to the provinces and elected local governments, provincial governments continue to usurp powers constitutionally devolved to the LGs. Dilating on this in Muhammad Faisal’s case, the Sindh High Court held that “The current jurisdiction that is exercised by each of the departments of the Government of Sindh, inter alia in respect of town planning and building control, is as per the decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in MQM (Pakistan) and others vs Pakistan being done in violation of Article 140A of the Constitution and which powers are to be devolved to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation.”
With the provinces’ recalcitrance to meaningfully devolve authority to elected LGs, and given the unrepresentative character of the existing political structure, a constitutional amendment for the purpose of representation reinforcement is the need of the hour. The theory of representation reinforcement developed by John Hart Ely acknowledges that narrow, hegemonic and well-entrenched groups may often dominate the legislative process, thus necessitating ameliorative action.
With provincial assemblies failing to enact laws devolving municipal functions to local bodies, a constitutional amendment focusing on LGs is the first step towards improving our cities. Writing for these pages, this writer had previously proposed recognising Karachi as a ‘metropolitan government’ with a directly elected mayor. Additionally, the existing NFC structure ought to be revised to ensure that the metropolitan governments directly receive funds through the NFC.
Further, such an amendment ought to not only entrust the metropolitan mayor with municipal functions but also ensure that the mayor’s authority extends to matters relating to police, energy, and civil and criminal procedure. This is particularly important for a city like Karachi, where businesses often lament the legal system’s failure to enforce contractual arrangements and proprietary rights.
A system where contractual disputes span decades, where proprietary rights are frequently trampled, and where alternative dispute resolution remains non-existent fails to engender investor confidence. With rumours rife about the impending 28th Amendment, will Karachi’s voice finally be heard, or will its citizens continue to suffer at the altar of political expedience?
The writer is a lawyer.
X: @MoizBaig26
Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2026
