Pakistan opposition wants new provinces

Pakistan main opposition party is likely to finalise a plan on the issue of making new provinces in the country, reports said on Monday. Pakistan opposition wants new provinces on administrative grounds The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz said earlier that new provinces should be created on administrative grounds rather than on ethnic and linguistic basis. According to media reports Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led government has taken the decision to bifurcate Punjab province into two provinces to counter the expected agitation by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz led Punjab government. The PML-N would ask the government to first devise a formula on the basis of which a new province should be created and that formula should be applicable to all parts of the country and not only to areas where the demands for new provinces are being raised. It says that the formula should be based on population, area, resources, sources of income and other important factors to resolve the issue on a permanent basis. Media quoting the PML-N sources said, the party wanted the government to initiate a consultative process to develop a broad-based consensus among all the political parties inside and outside parliament before taking any practical step towards creating a new province. Giving up the party`s traditional resistance against demands for new provinces, former Prime Minister and PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif had said that Muslim League was not against new provinces but they should be made on administrative grounds. Sharif said that he was in favour of creating new provinces when and here they were necessary. He, however, warned that if new provinces were made on linguistic, racial or group basis, then it would damage the country`s security and integrity. Analysts assert that the PPP has gone ahead with the proposal of new provinces sans realising that it would lead to huge constitutional crisis and would make the economics of the country more vulnerable. “How would other provinces allow Punjab to have 40 seats in the Senate when the province is divided into two?” analysts ask.