One wonders if Imran Khan was talking offhand when he suggested turning every administrative division in the country into a province, claiming that it would make governance more effective. According to former PM, the country’s problems can be tackled more effectively if every division is treated as a province. Presently Pakistan comprises four provinces and two autonomous territories that is, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan with a combined total of 37 divisions. The PTI had promised to carve out a Seraiki entity out of Punjab province but failed due to lack of support from the two-thirds majority in Parliament required for passing a constitutional amendment. A bill for the creation of the Hazara province was also tabled in Parliament in 2019 where it lies in limbo for lack of enthusiasm on the part of the proposers. What Imran Khan has suggested is much more radical and controversial.
The words Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan will disappear from Pakistan’s map and be replaced with the names of the administrative divisions. The scheme has serious political implications. Breaking up provinces and obliterating their centuries-old nomenclatures that generations have identified themselves with, will cause a shock. In Sindh this will be interpreted as the success of a conspiracy that Sindhis have long resisted. In other provinces too it will be interpreted as an attempt to deprive people of their historical identities. The proposed scheme will strengthen parochial tendencies.
Keeping the country’s economic situation in view, the scheme is simply impracticable. Whatever the supposed benefits of the plan the creation of 37 provinces is financially unaffordable. The new provinces will require the construction of provincial facilities like Assembly Halls, Secretariats, housing facilities for governors, ministers and bureaucrats along with fleets of cars for their use. Provincial High Courts too will have to be set up. Funds will have to be allocated to keep the massive administrative set-up functioning. The suggestion as untimely as it is divisive.
