New Provinces

Pakistan’s more than 240 million people live across an enormous and geographically diverse territory, yet governance remains concentrated in only four provinces, each responsible for more than 60 million people. This creates an administrative system that is too distant and overburdened to address the specific needs of individual districts and tehsils, especially in Punjab, where more than half the population is governed from Lahore despite the distance from areas such as Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur, and Sialkot. Remote citizens often have to make long, expensive, and difficult journeys to provincial capitals for basic documentation, land disputes, specialized healthcare, and other services; Chitral residents may face difficult travel to Peshawar, while Balochistan’s coastal communities may travel hundreds of miles to Quetta and encounter additional linguistic and cultural barriers. This distance produces feelings of neglect and unequal development, as peripheral communities may believe their taxes benefit major cities while their own areas lack clean water, schools, healthcare, and other basic facilities, potentially contributing to separatist movements and regional instability. India provides an example of more decentralized administration, operating with 36 states, provinces, and union territories despite being much larger in population and territory, while Pakistan’s One Unit policy of 1955–1970 demonstrates the dangers of excessive centralization and ignoring ethnic, linguistic, and regional identities. These experiences suggest that Pakistan’s existing provincial structure should not be regarded as permanent and should evolve according to changing administrative and social needs.

The most practical solution proposed is to transform existing administrative divisions into provinces, using their established headquarters, government offices, police, courts, development authorities, and other infrastructure as the foundation for new provincial governments. Multan, for example, already has a civil secretariat, high court bench, police headquarters, and departmental offices, meaning it could become a provincial capital with comparatively modest investment rather than requiring the construction of entirely new secretariats, universities, hospitals, housing, and other infrastructure costing hundreds of billions of rupees. This would reduce financial pressure and allow existing administrative machinery to continue operating during a relatively smooth transition. New provinces could also stimulate regional economies by creating provincial governments, assemblies, ministries, civil-service positions, courts, judges, police structures, and thousands of jobs, while attracting professionals and reducing migration to overcrowded metropolitan areas. New police forces could improve law and order through familiarity with local languages, geography, and social conditions, while construction and increased spending would benefit contractors, suppliers, hotels, restaurants, transport providers, and other small and medium businesses. However, provincial creation alone cannot solve Pakistan’s governance or financial crisis: it must be combined with a strong crackdown on systemic corruption, including embezzlement, favoritism, bribery, ghost employees, inflated development contracts, fraudulent welfare payments, and theft of electricity and water. The cited audit findings—including alleged embezzlement of more than Rs40 billion from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government accounts and Rs25 billion siphoned from the Benazir Income Support Programme through fraudulent payments—illustrate the scale of the problem. Weak tax collection and severe electricity-sector theft and line losses further deprive the government of revenue, forcing borrowing and leaving inadequate resources for infrastructure and social development; therefore, administrative decentralization must be accompanied by stronger financial accountability, better revenue collection, and effective control of public-sector leakages so that new provinces can become financially viable and genuinely improve citizens’ welfare.
Therefore, the creation of new provinces must be intrinsically linked to a comprehensive governance reform agenda that includes the establishment of independent and powerful anti-corruption bodies, the full digitization of government financial systems to eliminate human discretion and create a verifiable audit trail, the implementation of strict and transparent merit-based recruitment policies for all government jobs, and a radical overhaul of the tax collection system to ensure that every eligible citizen and business pays their fair share.

The guiding principles for the creation of these new provinces must be crystal clear and fundamentally rooted in the national interest, and the primary criteria for demarcation should be the population size and the geographical contiguity of the proposed units, with the express purpose of ensuring that no new province is created on the divisive basis of language, ethnicity, or tribal affiliation, as such an approach would sow the seeds of further disintegration and undermine the long-term unity and solidarity of the Pakistani people. The history of Pakistan is unfortunately replete with examples of how identity politics and the mobilization of people along ethnic and linguistic lines have led to intense conflict, sometimes violent, and have distracted the nation from the more pressing issues of economic development and social justice, and it would be the height of folly to repeat these mistakes by creating provinces that are defined by a single ethnic group. The creation of provinces like Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on the basis of language and ethnicity in the past, while a recognition of historical grievances, has also entrenched these identities in the political landscape, creating a sense of ownership and exclusivity that can sometimes manifest in hostility towards other groups. The goal of the new provincial scheme should be to create units that are diverse and pluralistic, where no single ethnic or linguistic group feels that the province belongs exclusively to them and where all citizens feel equally represented and entitled to the benefits of the state. A province should be a unit of administration and development, not a homeland for a particular ethnic group, and by focusing on population and geography, the government can create provinces that are both administratively viable and socially cohesive, fostering a sense of unity and patriotism that transcends narrow sub-national identities. This is not to say that the cultural and linguistic heritage of the various regions should be ignored, but rather that this heritage should be celebrated and preserved within a framework of civic nationalism, where the primary identity of every citizen is that of a Pakistani, and where the new provinces are seen as different branches of the same national tree, not as separate trees in a divided forest.

It is absolutely imperative that the political parties of the country, which hold the levers of power and shape the public discourse, do not allow the noble cause of creating new provinces to be hijacked by their own narrow partisan interests and that they instead unite behind this issue as a matter of national urgency, recognizing that the creation of new provinces is not a political football to be kicked around for electoral advantage but a structural reform that will ease the difficulties of millions of people and strengthen the very foundations of the state. Unfortunately, the history of this debate is that it has often been used as a bargaining chip by political parties to reward their strongholds or to punish their opponents, and there have been numerous instances where parties have paid lip service to the idea of new provinces but have failed to act on it due to a lack of political will or a fear of disrupting the existing power balance. However, the time for such political gamesmanship is long past, and the current generation of political leaders is called upon to demonstrate a higher degree of statesmanship and to put the interests of the people above their own political calculations. The people of Pakistan, who are the ultimate stakeholders in this process, are already showing a remarkable degree of maturity and understanding, and they are likely to welcome the decision to create new provinces with open arms, as they are the ones who have suffered the most from the current dysfunctional system. The residents of Hazara, for instance, have long demanded a separate province, and their persistent campaign for this right is a testament to their belief that a smaller administrative unit will provide them with better representation, more resources, and a greater say in their own affairs. Similarly, the people of Saraiki-speaking areas in southern Punjab, the Bahawalpur region, and the people of the various districts in Balochistan have all expressed a strong desire for greater administrative autonomy, and the government would be wise to heed these voices and to act decisively to fulfill their legitimate aspirations. By taking a bold and decisive step to create new provinces, the government can signal to the people that it is serious about reforming the state and delivering on its promises, and this act of political courage will go a long way in restoring public trust and confidence in the political system, which is currently at an all-time low.

The creation of new provinces in Pakistan is not a luxury that the country can afford to postpone or a whimsical idea that can be dismissed lightly, but rather a fundamental and indispensable reform that is essential for the long-term health, stability, and prosperity of the nation, and it is a reform whose time has definitively come. The current four-province structure is a relic of the past, a colonial-era administrative convenience that is completely inadequate to address the complex challenges of a twenty-first-century nation of over two hundred and forty million people, and its continuation is a primary cause of the inefficiency, inequality, and alienation that plague the country. The conversion of existing divisions into provinces offers a practical, low-cost, and readily implementable solution that leverages existing infrastructure and avoids the fiscal burden of building new state structures from scratch, making it a prudent and intelligent policy choice. The creation of new provinces will not only improve governance and administrative efficiency but will also generate a significant number of new jobs and economic opportunities, providing a much-needed boost to regional economies and offering new prospects for the country’s burgeoning youth population. At the same time, this structural reform must be accompanied by a sustained and resolute effort to eradicate corruption and plug the financial leakages that drain the public treasury, as these resources are the lifeblood of the new provinces and are essential for funding the development projects that will transform the lives of the people. The principles of demarcation must be based on population and geography, with a steadfast refusal to allow language or ethnicity to become the defining characteristics of the new units, in order to ensure that these provinces become symbols of national unity and not sources of further division. The political parties must rise above their petty rivalries and act with a sense of collective responsibility, recognizing that the creation of new provinces is a national cause that transcends party lines, and the government must have the courage and the resolve to move forward with this agenda, confident in the knowledge that the people of Pakistan will embrace this decision as a historic step towards a stronger, more prosperous, and more just nation. The path forward is clear, the arguments are compelling, and the time for action is now, for in the creation of new provinces lies the key to unlocking Pakistan’s immense potential and ensuring a brighter future for all its citizens, a future where governance is not a distant and abstract concept but a tangible, responsive, and empowering reality for every man, woman, and child in the country.