Pakistan’s Federal Compact

By Khizar Abbas Syed

Pakistan can debate the creation of new provinces. It can debate whether Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan are too large to administer effectively. It can debate whether smaller provinces would improve governance, representation and development.

But there is one principle that should not be compromised: “Pakistan cannot redraw its federal map without a political consensus among the people and institutions that constitute the federation.”

Creating new provinces is not equivalent to creating new administrative divisions. A division can be created through an administrative order. A province is a constitutional entity with its own government, legislature, finances, political representation, natural-resource interests and place within the federal bargain.

If new provinces are created without serious political negotiation and the meaningful involvement of stakeholders, Pakistan could find itself reopening some of the most sensitive questions in its history—water, finance, resources, representation and provincial autonomy—simultaneously.

The result may not be greater administrative efficiency. It could instead be a new phase of inter-provincial political conflict.

The Water Accord: A settlement that cannot simply be redrawn on a map

The clearest example is the Water Apportionment Accord of 1991.

The Accord was not an ordinary bureaucratic formula. It emerged after negotiations among the provinces to settle a longstanding and politically sensitive dispute over the distribution of the waters of the Indus River System. The official record states that representatives of the four provinces met in Lahore and Karachi in March 1991 and agreed on the distribution of the Indus waters.

That history matters.

The Accord allocated water among Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. Its framework subsequently became the basis for the functioning of the Indus River System Authority (IRSA), which has representation from the four provinces and the federal government.

The existing allocations under Paragraph 2 include 55.94 million acre-feet (MAF) for Punjab, 48.76 MAF for Sindh, 5.78 MAF for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 3.87 MAF for Baluchistan, with additional treatment for certain KP civil canals.

Now imagine that four provinces become eight, twelve or more.

The question is not simply where to draw the new boundaries.

The real question is:

Who inherits the existing water rights?

If Punjab is divided into three or four provinces, does the original Punjab allocation remain a collective entitlement? If so, who determines the internal distribution? If the new provinces demand direct representation in IRSA, how is that representation structured? If downstream and upstream regions become separate provinces, how are their competing interests reconciled?

These are potentially explosive questions.

The water available in the Indus system does not increase merely because the number of provinces increases. What changes is the number of political actors claiming a legitimate voice in its distribution.

Your accompanying analysis makes this point directly: because the existing WAA framework identifies four provincial entities and IRSA is structured around their representation, a major increase in the number of provinces would require substantial legal, constitutional and institutional adjustments.

That adjustment should be negotiated before, not after, provincial boundaries are changed.

The NFC: the other half of the federal bargain

Water is only one side of the problem.

The other is money.

Article 160 of Pakistan’s Constitution establishes the National Finance Commission (NFC) to recommend the distribution of specified federal tax revenues between the Federation and provinces, grants-in-aid and certain borrowing matters. The Commission includes the Federal Finance Minister, provincial Finance Ministers and other members appointed through the constitutional process.

The NFC is therefore not simply a budgeting exercise. It is one of the principal mechanisms through which Pakistan’s federal compact operates.

The 7th NFC Award illustrates the political complexity involved.

It moved away from a single population-based criterion and adopted multiple indicators, including population, poverty and backwardness, revenue generation/collection and inverse population density. The agreed provincial shares were 51.74 percent for Punjab, 24.55 percent for Sindh, 14.62 percent for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 9.09 percent for Baluchistan.

Those figures were not merely mathematical outputs. They represented a negotiated accommodation among the Federation and the provinces.

Now consider dividing those provinces.

The country would have to answer another series of difficult questions.

How would the existing provincial share be distributed among successor provinces?

Would population remain the dominant factor?

How would poverty and backwardness be measured?

How would revenue collection be calculated?

How would inverse population density work for smaller provinces?

Who would inherit provincial debt?

Who would inherit government employees, pension obligations, buildings, universities, hospitals and infrastructure?

How would natural-resource royalties be distributed?

Would smaller provinces require transitional grants?

And, most importantly, would the existing NFC arrangement survive unchanged?

There is no simple administrative answer to these questions.

They require negotiation.

The danger of creating provinces first and negotiating later

This is where the political danger becomes particularly serious.

If provincial restructuring occurs before agreement is reached on water, finance, resources and representation, the creation of provinces itself could become the starting point for a new series of disputes.

The country could move from a four-party federal negotiation to a much larger number of competing provincial claims.

Instead of Punjab, Sindh, KP and Baluchistan negotiating with one another, multiple successor provinces could demand separate rights and representation.

The institutional consequences could be profound.

IRSA would require restructuring. The NFC formula would require reconsideration. The Senate’s representation would need to be examined. National and provincial political representation would change. Administrative assets and liabilities would have to be divided.

Even the question of provincial capitals, High Courts, civil services and police structures would become politically sensitive.

In other words, creating a province creates a new political stakeholder.

That stakeholder cannot reasonably be expected to accept a political and fiscal arrangement designed before it existed.

The Constitution itself recognizes the sensitivity of provincial boundaries

Pakistan’s Constitution does not treat provincial boundaries as ordinary administrative lines.

Article 239(4) requires a two-thirds majority of the relevant Provincial Assembly before a constitutional amendment altering the limits of a province can proceed to presidential assent.

That safeguard reflects an important constitutional principle: the territory of a province is part of the federal constitutional structure.

Therefore, the question of new provinces should begin with constitutional politics—not executive administration.

There should be parliamentary debate, provincial assembly debate, consultation with political parties and meaningful engagement with the affected populations.

A process that bypasses these institutions may technically attempt to achieve an administrative objective, but it risks weakening the constitutional institutions that are supposed to manage disagreement.

What happens when the military becomes associated with political restructuring?

This brings us to the most sensitive part of the debate.

Pakistan’s armed forces have an established constitutional role in national defense and security. They have also historically played a significant role in Pakistan’s political history.

That history makes perceptions particularly important.

If major political restructuring is seen as being driven primarily by unelected institutions, the public debate can quickly shift from:

“Are smaller provinces good for governance?”

to:

“Who is actually deciding Pakistan’s constitutional future?”

That is a dangerous transformation.

Even if the policy itself has legitimate administrative arguments behind it, the perception of political engineering can undermine its legitimacy.

A province that emerges after prolonged parliamentary debate, provincial consent and public consultation is likely to be understood differently from one perceived as the product of institutional pressure.

The distinction is fundamental.

Constitutional change needs constitutional ownership.

Political engineering can weaken the political system it intends to manage

There is another danger.

When political parties believe that major constitutional decisions are being made outside Parliament, their incentive to negotiate through Parliament declines.

Why compromise if the outcome can ultimately be determined somewhere else?

This creates a damaging cycle:

institutional mistrust → political confrontation → extra-parliamentary influence → weaker parliamentary institutions → greater mistrust.

Over time, political parties may become less willing to accept electoral outcomes, parliamentary compromises or constitutional decisions.

Regional parties, meanwhile, may increasingly mobilize around ethnic, linguistic or territorial identities.

The creation of provinces could then become not an exercise in administrative decentralization but a competition over political survival.

This is particularly dangerous in a country as regionally diverse as Pakistan.

Smaller provinces may solve some problems—but create others

There is a legitimate case for smaller provinces.

Large provinces can be difficult to administer. Remote regions may feel politically neglected. Smaller administrative units can potentially bring government closer to citizens and make development planning more regionally responsive.

These arguments deserve serious consideration.

But smaller does not automatically mean better governed.

A new provincial government requires a bureaucracy, police, judiciary, legislature, secretariat, public institutions and financial resources. It requires sustainable revenue arrangements and an administrative transition.

If these questions are ignored, Pakistan could end up with more governments without necessarily obtaining better governance.

The real debate should therefore not be:

“More provinces or no more provinces?”

It should be:

“What constitutional, financial, administrative and political framework would make additional provinces viable?”

That is the debate Pakistan needs.

The first principle should be consensus

There is a simple lesson from the history of both water and fiscal federalism.

The most sensitive national arrangements become sustainable when stakeholders participate in their creation.

The 1991 Water Accord itself emerged from negotiations among the provinces. Its implementation framework subsequently incorporated provincial representation through IRSA.

The NFC likewise operates through a constitutional mechanism involving the Federation and provinces, with resource distribution requiring accommodation among competing interests. The official record of the 7th NFC Award specifically emphasizes the spirit of accommodation that produced agreement on the distribution of resources.

This is how a federation survives.

Not by eliminating disagreement.

By creating institutions through which disagreement can be negotiated.

Pakistan needs a national dialogue before a new map

If there is serious political support for creating new provinces, Pakistan should establish a broad-based constitutional and political process before finalizing any boundaries.

Such a process should examine at least six questions simultaneously:

First, what will happen to the Water Apportionment Accord and provincial water rights?

Second, how will the NFC and federal-provincial revenue distribution be redesigned?

Third, how will the Senate and National Assembly representation change?

Fourth, how will natural resources, royalties, assets, debts and administrative institutions be divided?

Fifth, what will be the constitutional status and transition mechanism for the new provinces?

Sixth, and most importantly, what level of political and public consent is required in the affected territories?

A national constitutional commission, parliamentary committee or another agreed political mechanism could bring these questions together.

The military and other state institutions should remain within their constitutional domains, while elected political institutions take responsibility for negotiating the political future of the federation.

The issue is bigger than provincial boundaries

Pakistan does not need to fear constitutional change.

It needs to fear constitutional change without constitutional consensus.

New provinces may eventually prove to be an effective way of improving governance. Or Pakistan may conclude that other reforms—stronger local governments, administrative decentralization, better fiscal transfers and greater provincial autonomy—would achieve similar objectives without redrawing the map.

That debate should be open.

But if the map is redrawn through pressure rather than consensus, the consequences could extend far beyond the proposed provinces.

It could reopen the water question.

It could reopen the fiscal question.

It could alter the balance of the Senate.

It could intensify regional competition.

And if the process is perceived as being driven by military or unelected institutional influence, it could deepen the already difficult relationship between Pakistan’s political institutions and the security establishment.

That is why the method matters as much as the objective.

Pakistan’s federation is not merely a map divided into four colour. It is a political compact built through negotiation among regions with different histories, populations, economies and interests.

Change that compact through dialogue, and it may evolve. Change it through coercion or political engineering, and it may fracture.

The choice is therefore not simply between four provinces and twelve.

The real choice is between consensus and confrontation, constitutional ownership and institutional imposition, political negotiation and political engineering.

If Pakistan genuinely wants stronger provinces, it should first strengthen the political process through which provinces are created.

A new province should be born from the consent of the federation—not from the pressure of the state.