KARACHI: President Arif Alvi on Sunday approved the appointment of Muhammad Kamran Khan Tessori as Governor Sindh, a top constitutional post in the province which had been lying vacant since the resignation of Imran Ismail in April this year.
Speaker Sindh Assembly Aga Siraj Khan Durrani had been serving as acting governor for the last six months.
In this undated photo, MQM-Pakistan's leader Kamran Tessori is seen addressing an event in Karachi. (Photo courses: social media)
The announcement was made from the official Twitter account of the Pakistan president.
“President Dr. Arif Alvi has approved the appointment of Muhammad Kamran Khan Tessori as the Governor of Sindh,” the President House said in a Twitter post. “The President gave this approval under Article 101-1 of the Constitution.”
A gold trader by profession, Tessori started his political career from the platform of Pakistan Muslim League Functional (PML-F) before joining the Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) in 2017.
However, his party membership was terminated the very next year for his alleged role in dividing his new political faction into MQM-Bahardurabad and MQM-PIB.
Tessori returned to the party last month as member of the central coordination committee, though his entry to the top forum was resisted by party ranks.
While it is not a constitutional requirement, Pakistan’s federal government frequently appoints a person from the Urdu-speaking community as Governor in southern Sindh province where chief minister belongs to the Sindhi community.
The governorship was also one of the main demands the MQM-P had put forward before voting against the country’s former prime minister Imran Khan and joining the new coalition government in April.
The MQM-P proposed the name of Nasreen Jalil as governor Sindh in May and a summary was sent to the president for approval, though she could not become the governor after her 2015 letter to the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad emerged in which she had sought Indian help against a crackdown on her party leaders and workers in Karachi.
Speaking at a news conference at the Karachi Press Club last month, senior MQM-P leader and federal minister for information technology Syed Aminul Haque said he hoped Jalil’s name would be approved. “She has been proposed by the MQM Pakistan and we hope that she will be appointed as governor Sindh,” he told reporters.
Haque, MQM-P leader Waseem Akhter and the newly appointed governor Sindh Kamran Tessori did not respond to Arab News’ request for a comment regarding the appointment and reported disagreements over the issue within the party.
However, political analyst Mazhar Abbas said the decision was “not political” and had been “imposed.”
“This is not a political but non-political decision imposed over the party,” he told Arab News, adding Tessori’s induction into the central coordination committee had been resisted by the party.
“In a party meeting with non-political people, the MQM-P was communicated that if Tessori could not be inducted into the Rabita [Coordination] Committee, then he should be made governor Sindh,” Abbas said.
“This case resembles that of [the former law minister] Farogh Naseem,” he added. “In his case, the MQM-P openly said it voted for him in the Senate election despite the fact that Naseem was not their man.”
