The fallout of these developments on the residents of Karachi, regardless of their ethnic origin, was that the well-managed city of Karachi of yore no longer remained well-managed. All services collapsed and widespread corruption led to haphazard and disorganised development of the city, resulting in the urban centre, except some areas that were managed by the offshoots of the armed forces, such as Defence Housing Authority, becoming by and large uninhabitable. Surprisingly, all this while, the Federal Government, except for a brief period when Musharraf ruled Pakistan and introduced City District Governments, took no interest in solving the problems of Karachi and whenever it did try to do so half-heartedly, it was resisted by the Sindh Government and it was dubbed as interference in the affairs of the province of Sindh. Fortunately, meanwhile the influence of MQM waned and, in time, due to the shenanigans of its Supremo at the time, it virtually became extinct. However, the damage was done and the infrastructure of Karachi was ruined and due to breakdown of municipal services the city became a dump of garbage and was inundated with overflowing gutters.

The question now arises: what is to be done about the unfortunate city of Karachi?
It is obvious that the answer lies in giving the city an efficient and effective local government but unfortunately the Sindh Government regards this as giving up their control over the city, which they claim as a matter of right. Consequently, the Local Government laws in Sindh are most ineffective amongst all the provinces, the aim being that power over the institutions in Karachi must not be ceded to the Karachities. It is in these circumstances that the new political party, i.e. PTI which has partly replaced MQM in Karachi and happens to be in power at the centre, started thinking in terms of finding ways and means to be able to interfere in the affairs of Karachi as they cannot change the Local Government laws since they lack the requisite strength in Sindh’s Provincial Assembly.

Unfortunately the Constitution of Pakistan is extremely circumspect about any provisions regarding local governments even though a strong local government is the soul of democracy. There is only one superficial Article in the Constitution, i.e. Art 140-A, which deals with establishing Local Government. It is so brief and ineffective that any provincial assembly can in fact ignore it completely by merely going through the motions of forming a local government with little or no devolution of administrative or financial responsibility. Whatever powers the National Assembly had to make laws for a province, were taken away by abolishment of the concurrent list from the legislative lists through the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Under the circumstances, now the only way that the Federal Government can act in the interest of the people of a province is by relying on Art 149 of the Constitution, particularly its sub article (4). Before discussing what can or cannot be done by the Federal Government under this Article, it would be appropriate to reproduce it below:

149. Directions to Province in certain cases. (1) The executive authority of every Province shall be so exercised as not to impede or prejudice the exercise of the executive authority of the Federal, and the executive authority of the Federation shall extend to the giving of such directions to a Provinces as may appear to the Federal Government to be necessary for that purpose.
(4)The executive authority of the Federation shall also extend to the giving of directions to a Province as to the manner in which the executive authority thereof is to be exercised for the purpose of preventing any grave menace to the peace or transquality or economic life of Pakistan or any part thereof.

A plain reading of the Art 149 would show that this Article was introduced in the Constitution because in any Federation there is always a possibility of conflict between the Federation and the Province in the exercise of authority of the Federation. In such an event, under this Article, directions can be given by the Federation to the Province for the purposes of enforcing the authority of the Federation. However, it must be noted that this Article can only be invoked when there is an apprehension of the Provincial Government acting in a manner where the exercise of authority by the Federation is likely to be impeded in any manner.
On the other hand, sub-article 4 of Art 149 is meant to cater for the situation where the Provincial Government is likely to act in a manner prejudicial to peaceful running of the province or in a manner that there is an apprehension of the economic life of the Province being gravely disturbed.

It is obvious that both the afore-stated provisions of the Constitution whereby the Federal Government can act are conditional upon the Federation’s authority being impeded and not otherwise, that is to say if a Province exercises its authority in the province in a manner that it does not impinge on the authority of the Federation, then this Article cannot be invoked. Besides, even when it can be invoked, the power of the Federation is limited to only giving “Directions” to the Provincial Government and not to take any direct unilateral action.

It is obvious therefore that given the current situation in Karachi, if the Federal Government invokes Art 149, it will not be able to act independently in the Province to correct the imbalance in the administrative machinery as it exists in Karachi. If the Federal Government nevertheless acts independently the Supreme Court is bound to interfere at the behest of the Province to prevent the Federal Government from taking such an action.

Under the circumstances the only solution to the problem of imbalance in the administrative machinery of Karachi, short of creating a separate province, which the Provincial Assembly of the Sindh Government will never approve, is an Amendment to Art 140-A of the Constitution to explicitly lay down as to what sort of Local Government should be formed in a Province just as the Constitution clearly lays down as to what sort of Provincial Government is to be formed in a Province.

This is so because to expect the traditional Rulers of all Provinces, where feudals govern, to voluntarily evolve a strong local government is to expect the impossible because they are loath to let an alternate centre of power emerge in the cities in the shape of mayors or the erstwhile nazims of the Musharraf era. While in other provinces, because of absence of commerce and urban culture, the feudals manage to control even the cities through their surrogates, in Karachi they find themselves helpless hence their unwillingness to introduce a comprehensive local government system. Consequently there is a definite need to amend Art 140-A and lay down explicitly as to what sort of local government the Provincial Assembly ought to introduce. Need it be said that essentially nations, that are not ethnically homogenous, opt for a Federal system not only to give autonomy to constituent units of the Federation but to give power to the people of the respective Provinces at the grassroot level, by providing for a strong local government that vies with the Provincial Government itself for therein lies the true spirit of democracy in a Federation.