Redrawing Pakistan?—I False choice between provinces & districts

A federation cannot repair failed devolution by treating its constituent units and local governments as interchangeable

Constitutional change becomes dangerous not because it is ambitious, but because its categories are confused. Ahsan Iqbal’s proposal to create 15 additional provinces or, alternatively, 160 empowered district governments illustrates that danger. He speaks as Federal Planning Minister and Secretary General of the ruling party. His intervention cannot be filed away as private speculation. It is an important policy signal and must be examined accordingly.

There is already uncertainty at the proposal’s numerical core. In his June 2026 essay, Iqbal envisaged gradual reorganisation into 12 to 15 provinces. His latest statement has been reported as proposing 15 additional provinces. The distinction between 12–15 in total and 15 new provinces affects the Senate, National Finance Commission, Council of Common Interests and the transition architecture. Constitutional cartography cannot begin with an unstable denominator.

His diagnosis contains an essential truth. Devolution after the Eighteenth (Constitutional Amendment) Act of 2010 [Eighteenth Amendment] largely stopped at provincial capitals. Provincial governments demand formula-based transfers and protection from Islamabad, but deny comparable certainty to districts and municipalities.

Provincial finance commissions are irregular; local elections are delayed; councils are repeatedly redesigned; and municipal functions remain divided among provincial departments and unelected authorities. Government remains distant even when the provincial secretariat is autonomous.

That failure does not validate the choice offered. A province and a district are not different sizes of the same administrative product. A province is a constituent unit, with an elected assembly, cabinet, executive authority and residual legislative competence. It elects senators, contributes its chief minister to the Council of Common Interests (CCI), participates in the National Economic Council (NEC) and negotiates through the National Finance Commission (NFC). A district is local self-government constituted under provincial law. The difference is qualitative, not geographical.

Federalism combines self-rule within constituent units with shared rule at the centre. Local government answers which decisions should be made closest to citizens. The principles reinforce each other when responsibilities, finance and accountability are aligned; they become distorted when one erases the other. Pakistan does not have to choose between meaningful provinces and districts. It needs an order in which provinces cannot be bypassed by Islamabad and citizens cannot be ruled indefinitely from provincial capitals.

The Constitution is not silent about a supposed missing third tier. Article 140A directs each province to establish local government and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to elected representatives. In MQM-P v Federation, PLD 2022 SC 439, the Supreme Court required meaningful devolution and conformity of provincial laws with the Constitution. Weak local government is a failure to implement an existing command, not proof that Pakistan needs an entirely new constitutional order.

Precision is equally necessary when describing the Eighteenth Amendment. Iqbal refers to the devolution of 17 major subjects. The constitutional measure actually abolished the Concurrent Legislative List and its 47 entries, subject to limited reallocations within the federal lists and concurrent treatment retained for criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence.

The figure 17 is associated with federal ministries or divisions administratively devolved afterwards. Confusing the two reduces a renegotiated federal compact to a machinery-of-government exercise.

Creating provinces would trigger a constitutional chain far beyond new capitals. Article 1 identifies the federation’s territories; Articles 51, 59 and 106 structure representation in the National Assembly, Senate and provincial assemblies. Provincial powers, the CCI and NEC, the NFC formula, courts, public services, police and regulators would require reconsideration. Water, resources, assets, liabilities, debt, pensions and development commitments would need enforceable transition rules.

Article 239(4) supplies the indispensable democratic safeguard. A constitutional amendment altering the limits of a province requires two-thirds support in each House of Parliament and two-thirds of the total membership of the affected provincial assembly.

The requirement is not procedural decoration. It recognises that a constituent unit cannot be dismembered by a temporary federal majority. An executive committee, consultative conference, opinion survey or nationwide referendum may inform political judgment; none can replace the constitutionally prescribed consent of the affected province.

The number of provinces is also part of the distribution of national power. Equal provincial representation in the Senate means that every new province changes the balance of the upper House. Every new chief minister changes the composition and bargaining structure of the CCI.

Every fiscally weaker unit alters the demands placed upon equalisation through the NFC. Before any map is drawn, Parliament must answer whether existing provinces will retain equal Senate representation, how resources will be shared, and which institutions will absorb the recurring cost of the proposed structure.

This is why reports of proposals to place Karachi or Gwadar under federal control and to channel federal funds directly to local governments are especially troubling. Federalising a provincial city without the province’s consent would be recentralisation presented as devolution.

Direct federal transfers that bypass provincial institutions would weaken the NFC framework and invite discretionary patronage. National grants for agreed objectives are possible, but their design belongs in constitutional forums and must respect both provincial autonomy and transparent provincial finance commission arrangements.

The trichotomy of powers requires similar care. Territorial reorganisation does not itself abolish separation among legislature, executive and judiciary. A ‘new social contract’ would, however, approach constitutional refounding if it altered territory, representation, executive control, fiscal authority, courts and the position of cities together. Following recent changes to judicial architecture, another omnibus amendment prepared through executive signalling rather than sustained parliamentary deliberation would deepen instability.

History supplies a warning against administrative arithmetic imposed from above. The One Unit scheme merged the western provinces in 1955 to manufacture parity with East Pakistan. Its centralising logic weakened provincial identities without solving the crisis of representation.

The National Assembly’s own parliamentary history records the secession of East Pakistan after the 1970 election and the subsequent construction of the 1973 settlement. One Unit and 1971 are not arguments against every new province; they are arguments against treating territorial design as an elite management device.

The 1973 Constitution derived legitimacy from a different method. A constitution committee was established in April 1972, its draft was presented at the end of that year, and the National Assembly passed the Constitution unanimously on April 10, 1973.

The Eighteenth Amendment, whatever its incomplete implementation, again emerged from broad multiparty deliberation. These precedents show that changes to the federal bargain require negotiation among political forces and constituent units, not the conversion of an official talking point into a predetermined amendment.

Comparative numbers cannot cure the conceptual weakness. India’s states, Afghanistan’s provinces and China’s regions operate under radically different constitutional, fiscal and political systems. Nor do Pakistan’s poor social indicators prove that creating more provincial bureaucracies will improve schools, health or sanitation. Institutional quality, the allocation of functions, fiscal capacity and accountability matter more than the bare number of units. Part II of this series will test these comparisons and the financial claims through a proposed political census.

New provinces are not unconstitutional or inherently anti-federal. A durable regional demand, supported by the affected population and province, may justify a new constituent unit. South Punjab, Hazara or any other claim deserves examination on its own history, territorial coherence and fiscal viability. What cannot be justified is fixing a national number first and searching afterwards for boundaries and reasons. Genuine provincehood claims should not be bundled with schemes for federal control of cities or used as substitutes for elected local government.

Pakistan needs neither constitutional paralysis nor constitutional haste. The correct first question is not whether the federation should have 12, 15, 19 or more provinces. It is what problem each proposed change would solve, which level should perform each function, who would finance it, and whose consent would make it legitimate. Those answers require a political census before constitutional cartography. Until it is undertaken, the choice between more provinces and empowered districts remains not a governance solution, but a false choice.

[To be continued]

Huzaima Bukhari, lawyer and author, has been Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Senior Visiting Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE)

Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds an LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996.