KARACHI: A day after workers loyal to rival factions within MQM-Pakistan clashed violently at the party’s Bahadurabad headquarters, senior leaders have come forward to address the fallout — offering conciliatory language even as the party’s central office remains closed and questions linger over how deep the rift really runs.
MQM-P Chairman Dr. Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui issued a statement describing Sunday night’s violence as the result of a misunderstanding and an altercation among party workers, characterising it as an unfortunate incident rather than a symptom of deeper organisational fracture.
He said the party leadership had reviewed the situation in its aftermath and that conditions were now improving.
The measured tone, it may be added here, stood in contrast to the scale of Sunday’s disorder — chairs thrown, stones hurled, aerial firing that sent workers and nearby residents into a panic, and at least one reported bullet injury.
In the statement’s telling, however, the episode is being framed as a containable lapse in worker discipline rather than an open confrontation between the Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui and Mustafa Kamal camps — despite the clash having broken out precisely along that fault line.
As a direct consequence, the Bahadurabad centre — the party’s nerve centre and symbolic seat of authority in Karachi — has been shut down following the confrontation between workers aligned with the two groups. No timeline has been given for when, or under what conditions, it might reopen.
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Dr. Farooq Sattar struck a sharper note.
Responding to the clash, he said senior party figures had been subjected to misbehaviour during the confrontation and stated plainly that such conduct cannot be tolerated.
He named Sabeen Ghauri, Mangla Sharma, and Aminul Haque specifically, describing them as senior leaders with whom the party shares decades of history, and argued that basic respect must be maintained regardless of whether someone is a rank-and-file worker or a senior office-bearer.
Sattar also offered a broader, more reflective observation on the state of the party: differences of opinion, he said, exist in every political party and are, in principle, a healthy sign of internal democracy — but taking those differences public, in the manner Sunday’s events did, was a mistake.
His remarks amounted to a rare public acknowledgment from within the party’s top tier that the Bahadurabad clash was not an isolated flashpoint, but the visible surfacing of disagreements that have been building for some time.
