Gulshan Town (Urdu: گلشن ٹاؤن) is a Karachi borough in the northeastern part of Karachi. Gulshan Town was formed in 2001 as part of the Local Government Ordinance 2001, and was subdivided into 11 union councils. The town system was disbanded in 2011, and Gulshan Town was reorganized as a subdivision of Karachi East District in 2015.[1][2]
Gulshan-e-Iqbal restored as Town in January 2022.[3]
The federal government under Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup d'etat, introduced local government reforms in the year 2000, which eliminated the previous "third tier of government" (administrative divisions) and replaced it with the fourth tier (districts). The effect in Karachi was the dissolution of the former Karachi Division in 2001, and the merging of its five districts to form a new Karachi City-District with eighteen autonomous constituent towns including Gulshan Town. In 2011, the system was disbanded but remained in place for bureaucratic administration until 2015, when the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation system was reintroduced. In 2015, Gulshan Town was re-organized as a sub-division as part of Karachi East district.
Gulshan-e-Iqbal town was restored as a Town in January 2022, which includes union committees 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 & 28.[3]
The population of Gulshan Town was estimated to be about 650,000 at the 1998 census, of which 99.5% are Muslim. It is dominated by the Urdu-speakingMuhajirs.[4][5] The minorities include, Sindhis, Punjabis, Kashmiris, Saraikis, Pakhtuns, Balochis, etc. The population of Gulshan Town was estimated to be nearly one million before census 2017. A small number of Konkani Muslims are also settled in the Kokan Cooperative Housing Society of Gulshan-e-Iqbal Town.
Neighbourhoods
Safari Park
Gulshan Town is the location of the main University of Karachi campus, as well as the offices of the City District Government of Karachi and the Attorney General of Sindh province. There are also few large parks which includes Aziz Bhatti Park, Askari Park, Aladin Park (now Bagh-e-Karachi) and the Safari Park.
Gulshan-e-Iqbal area may be called as a university town having more than a dozen of higher education institutions. Few of the major institutions are as follows:
^Sardar, Ziauddin; Yassin-Kassab, Robin (2012). Pakistan?. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-1-84904-223-9. If we go to Gulshan or Nazimabad (Muhajir neighbourhoods) and we see all of the schools and the businesses and the clean roads, we realise, where are we living? But just as Muttahida [the MQM] did it for themselves, it's for us to worry
