LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain has stressed that the question of creating new provinces should be resolved through national consultation rather than political confrontation.
Speaking to the media, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain said the creation of new provinces is not the issue of any single political party, group or region, but is directly connected to public convenience, better governance, administrative performance and the country’s future. He said decisions on the matter should be taken keeping ground realities and public needs in view, rather than political interests or momentary slogans.
He said the most important question is which system can provide greater convenience to the people and how their problems can be better resolved at their doorstep. If the creation of new provinces improves administrative affairs, delivers immediate relief to citizens and improves the performance of government institutions, he said, the proposal should be considered with an open mind.
The Pakistan Muslim League president also proposed strengthening and empowering administrative units. He said that if every division is given the status of an effective administrative unit, and powers, resources and decision-making are transferred to the lower tier, the distance between the administration and the public can be reduced and the problems of the common man resolved more effectively.
Chaudhry Shujaat said the country cannot afford further political division. Important national matters such as new provinces and administrative reforms, he said, need to be taken out of confrontation, accusation and political point-scoring and moved toward national consensus.
He urged all political parties to sit at one table, take the opinion of administrative and constitutional experts and public representatives, and formulate a workable system that creates ease for the people, makes the administration effective and strengthens the country.
The Pakistan Muslim League president further said that real success is not the victory or defeat of any political party, but providing the ordinary Pakistani with better administration, swift justice, basic facilities and easy access to the resolution of problems.
The remarks touch on one of the most procedurally demanding questions in Pakistani politics. Under Article 239 of the Constitution, altering the boundaries of a province requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament and, critically, a resolution passed by the assembly of the province concerned by a two-thirds majority.
That double threshold is the reason successive proposals have stalled irrespective of their political support at the federal level. No new province has been created in Pakistan since the reorganisation of West Pakistan and the subsequent constitutional settlement, although the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas were merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 2018.
Demands for new administrative units have been most sustained in southern Punjab, where campaigns for a Bahawalpur or South Punjab province have recurred across decades and have featured in the manifestos of multiple parties. A National Assembly commission examined the question in the previous decade without producing an enacted outcome. Punjab has separately established a South Punjab secretariat with devolved administrative functions — an approach closer to the divisional empowerment model Chaudhry Shujaat describes than to the creation of a full province.
Comparable demands exist in other provinces, including for a Hazara province in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is part of the reason the issue is politically difficult to confine to a single case.
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, a former prime minister and a long-standing figure in Punjab politics, has historically positioned his party as an advocate of negotiated settlements between competing political blocs.
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