PESHAWAR, March 1: The NWFP government has sought advice from a constitutional expert and an author of the 1973 Constitution, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, on changing the name of the province.

“I have asked Mr Pirzada to tell us how to go about changing the name of the NWFP,” Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani told journalists here on Wednesday. He said Mr Pirzada, who represented the NWFP in the arbitration council on the issue of net profits from hydel generation, would submit his report to the government on Thursday.

The chief minister said the province’s law department had already given him a report saying the provincial government could not change the name on its own by introducing a bill in the NWFP Assembly and would, therefore, have to seek amendment to the Constitution through the National Assembly by a two-third majority.

But, he said, according to some legal experts, the province was well within its right to seek a name for itself by introducing a bill in the provincial assembly.

Mr Durrani said he would decide about the future course of action after consulting legal and constitutional experts on the matter. He said he had already consulted most of political parties and politicians in the province, including opposition leaders, in an effort to achieve a consensus on the name of the province.

He said three names for the province were being discussed, which were Pakhtunistan, Pakhtunkhwa and Afghania. He said some people had also proposed Khyber as a name for the NWFP, but any new name should be reflective of the people inhibiting the province.

The chief minister said that according to the 1998 census, over 74 per cent of the people in the NWFP spoke Pashto as their first language and if the Jadoons and others dwelling in Hazara were included in the Pakhtun population, the percentage would rise further.

He said he was making serious efforts to settle the issue of naming the NWFP once and for all. He said one option before the government was to move an amendment to the Constitution in the National Assembly through the MMA and achieve a broader political support for it among all political parties at the national level.