SPEAKING in the National Assembly, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani reiterated his support to the idea of carving out new provinces. He appeared more interested in the proposed Seraiki province out of Punjab than any other elsewhere.

Although the idea of carving a couple of small provinces out of the large Punjab is not new, at this hour when the whole country is crying for resolution of other more pressing issues the call for a Seraiki province appears to be only politically motivated.

The are many issues: abject poverty, unprecedented price hike, increasing unemployment, deteriorating law and order, loadshedding of electricity and now short supply of natural gas, to name a few.

Issues of power outage and short supply of gas have not only crippled the economy but forced people to come onto the streets all over the country to protest in whatever manner they thought it fit.

What had prompted the prime minister to raise the issue of new province (s) now and so vociferously? Four years of his office have passed by, but he never talked of a Seraiki province. Why now, so all of a sudden and so strongly. If this was some issue at all, that could have been resolved through the 18th Amendment. Why has this issue cropped up now?

Should this be viewed against the backdrop of some of prime minister’s party stalwarts in Seraiki belt joining the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf? Should this be called a political gimmick to divert public attention from core issues, to woo the people in the southern region of Punjab and also to arrest the increasing popularity of the PTI there?

This is no time to play gimmicks. The nation is already passing through the most challenging and the toughest phase of its history. It’s time for uniting the people rather than create parochial, ethnic, linguistic and regional differences.

The topmost priority ought to be the resolution of the pressing issues the nation is currently faced with. The present leadership does not have much time at its disposal.

FATIMA SIDDIQUI Islamabad

Good governance

THE MQM’s resolution in the National Assembly for creating Hazara and Seraiki provinces has met with opposition from the ANP and the PML (N).

The constitution requires passage of such resolutions by a two-thirds majority of the respective provincial assembly, the lower house and the upper house. The MQM’s seriousness could be gauged by the fact that the party does not possess even a single seat in provincial assemblies of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which are supposed to pass the resolution with the required strength. Had the MQM consulted other stakeholders before tabling the resolution, the situation in the assembly would have been different.

However, by tabling the resolution, the MQM might have succeeded in winning favour of the people of Hazara, southern Punjab and particularly a sizable population of Hazarawals in Karachi which is supposed to be over two million.

The ANP has always been vocal about division of Punjab by creating the Seraiki province but for strange reasons denies the same right in its own province to the people of Hazara. The PML (N) has perhaps more pragmatic stance on the issue. As no single party now has the required strength to create new provinces, it seems appropriate to form a body of all stakeholders for a consensus.

If one looks at the history of the subcontinent, one learns that the creation of new units on the basis of administration or even on a lingual basis is not new in this part of the world. The boundaries of its regions have been changing from time to time. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the NWFP) was created with five settled districts separated from Punjab and the same number of political agencies.

Hazara was not in the original scheme but subsequently included on the recommendations of Col H. Dean, the NWFP’s first agent to the Governor-General, on the reasons that Hazara, among others, would provide the base for political control over cis-Indus black mountain tribes.

The Balochistan agency was given the status of a province in the last century. Sindh was detached from the Bombay presidency and declared a separate province by the Raj in 1935. Even Punjab was started to be called so during the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar. Earlier, it was known by the name of Lahore province, while Multan continued to be a separate entity as a province till it was conquered by the Sikhs during the period of Raja Ranjeet Singh for permanent induction into Punjab.

Why should only Hazara and Seraiki be declared separate provinces? A number of other regions merit consideration for provincial status. Creation of new provinces on a cultural, lingual and administrative basis is need of the day for good governance. It would be worth noting that at the time of independence, the British India had 17 provinces.

On partition 12 became provinces within India, whereas three within Pakistan and two (Bengal and Punjab) were portioned between India and Pakistan. India after a passage of States Reorganisation Act 1956 went for making a number of new provinces (states) on a lingual basis by dividing, redefining boundaries of its provinces and at present it has 29 provinces.

Indian Punjab, which happened to be 54 per cent of western Punjab, has been further divided into three provinces: Punjab, Haryana and Humachal Pradesh. Pakistan also needs to have small provinces on an administrative basis to serve its people in a better way.

S. SAJJAD Q. ASHRAF Haripur