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Karachi’s Hafiz Naeemur Rehman on Thursday was elected as the emir of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) for a five-year term, the party said in an announcement on its official account on X.
It said that he would serve as the party chief from April 2024 to April 2029. He had previously served as the chief of the party’s Karachi chapter.
The party said he was “unanimously elected” by its members for the role and wished him well.
Hafiz Naeem is the sixth man to occupy the post, following Maulana Abul A’la Maududi (1941-72), Mian Tufail Muhammad (1972-87), Qazi Hussain Ahmed (1987-2008), Munawer Hassan (2008-2013) and Sirajul Haq (2013-2024).
Hafiz Naeem’s predecessor, Sirajul Haq, had initially ended his decade-long run as the head of the party following a humbling defeat in the Feb 8 general elections.
The Jamaat had fielded 243 candidates for the National Assembly and failed to win even one seat. It had given 531 provincial tickets and only managed to secure six — three in KP, two in Sindh and one in Balochistan.
“Despite my best and tireless efforts, the party has not been able to achieve desired results. Workers put in best efforts. God may reward them for those efforts. I accept the responsibility of the defeat and hereby resign as party head,” his resignation letter said.
He had later withdrawn his resignation after the Jamaat Shura, a 100-member governing body, refused to accept it. His termed as the party head expired on March 31.
Who is Hafiz Naeem?
Hafiz Naeem had won a provincial assembly in the Feb 8 general elections but gave it up on the pretext that it was actually won by the PTI-backed independent candidate and that he was declared the winner only to defuse the pressure of the JI’s resistance and protest against the poll results.
“We don’t want a single vote which is not ours and we won’t give up a single one which was ours,” Hafiz Naeem had told a press conference at the party’s Karachi headquarters.
Despite this, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had notified his victory after an inordinate delay on Monday for the provincial assembly constituency.
Last year, Hafiz Naeem had also contested against PPP’s Murtaza Wahab for Karachi mayor in the Sindh local government elections but lost with 160 votes to Wahab’s 173.
Hafiz Naeem earned a civil engineering degree from NED university and a masters degree from Karachi University in Islamic history. In his formative years, he twice served as the president of the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba (IJT), the student wing of the JI.
In 2000, he became a member of JI and in October 2013, he was appointed as the chief of the party’s Karachi chapter. He also serves as the president of the Al-Khidmat Karachi chapter, an NGO associated with the JI.
Water shortage and drainage issues are of significant importance to the JI mayoral candidate. He vowed to see the K-IV project — which hopes to supply 260 million gallons per day (MGD) of water to Karachi — to completion, just like his predecessor Naimatullah Khan had done with the K-III project, 17 years ago.
He has been a vocal critic of the privatisation of public institutions such as K-Electric (KE) and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB). In the latter case, he has threatened to file court cases to prevent such privatisation. In 2021, he opposed subsidies from the government to KE, claiming that the now-private company was making large net profits, while the people of Karachi still suffered from load-shedding and over-billing. He has held protests against KE on multiple occasions over the years.
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