ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's planning minister has proposed splitting the country's four provinces into as many as 12 to 15 new ones, calling on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to set up a committee to study an overhaul of the country's administrative structure.
Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal said he has asked the law minister to help form a committee on administrative reforms that could open a national political debate on the issue.
"You need to build a political consensus to do this," Iqbal told local media, adding that building agreement among Pakistan's political parties would be essential before any new provinces could be created.
Iqbal said he is waiting for Sharif to return from a trip to Kyrgyzstan before raising the matter with him directly.
Under Iqbal's proposal, each of the four existing provinces, Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, would be divided into three smaller units. He said any restructuring would need to preserve a roughly equitable balance of representation in the Senate, Pakistan's upper house of Parliament, so that no region gains outsized political power.
Iqbal argued that the four provinces have grown increasingly centralized and monopolistic over time, which he said has weakened the delivery of public services such as health care and education.
Despite Iqbal's proposal, other government officials say no formal steps have been taken.
According to Rana Ihsaan Afzal Khan, a coordinator to the prime minister, no committee has been formed and that there has been no official discussion of the issue at the federal level. He said that if new provinces were eventually created, they would not take effect until the next election cycle.
The current round of debate began July 30, when Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said Pakistan's system of governance had broken down after more than 70 years under the existing structure. He suggested creating new administrative units to address the problem.
A day later, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of the military's Inter-Services Public Relations wing, echoed the call, telling reporters that Pakistan's population has roughly quadrupled since the country adopted its four-province structure and that the arrangement should be reexamined.
The comments have drawn sharp pushback, particularly in Sindh province, where nationalist groups have long resisted any effort to divide it. Nationalist parties have staged near-daily demonstrations since Aug. 12 opposing a potential split.
Criticism has come from beyond nationalist circles as well. Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari dismissed Naqvi's remarks as unserious given the gravity of the issue. In the Sindh Assembly this week, Pakistan Peoples Party leader Nisar Khuhro said Sindh was like his own body and soul, and challenged those pushing to divide the province.
Pakistan currently consists of four provinces, two autonomous territories and one federal capital territory. Calls to create additional provinces date back decades, including long-standing proposals to carve a South Punjab province out of Punjab and a Hazara province out of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In 2020, the previous government established a civil secretariat for South Punjab in Multan, a step widely viewed as laying the groundwork for an eventual province encompassing the Multan, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan divisions.
