ISLAMABAD: The opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N is likely to finalise on Monday its plan on the issue of making new provinces in the country.

A meeting of the party to be presided over by its president Nawaz Sharif will devise a strategy to deal with rising demands for creation of new provinces in the light of recommendations prepared by a 15-member committee it had set up last week.

The committee, headed by Senator Raja Zafarul Haq, will present its report to the party on Monday.

According to sources, the committee has suggested that the party should 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.

The PML-N, the sources said, 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.

They said there was a feeling within the party ranks that the Pakistan People`s Party (PPP) was only exploiting the issue to gain political mileage against the PML-N. The PML-N believes the government cannot take any step for the division of Punjab without its support.

The sources said that the PML-N would not allow anyone to dictate his terms on the issue.

The PML-N had constituted the special committee in the light of a policy statement given by Mr Sharif after his election as the party president last month.

Giving up the party`s traditional resistance against demands for new provinces, Mr Sharif had said that Muslim League was not against new provinces but they should be made on administrative grounds.

Mr Sharif had said that he was in favour of creating new provinces when and where they were necessary. He, however, had warned that if new provinces were made on linguistic, racial or group basis, then it would damage the country`s security and integrity.

The PML-N committee comprised Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, Zulfiqar Khosa, Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan, Ishaq Dar, Ahsan Iqbal, Mamnoon Hussain, Yaqoob Khan Nasir, Abdul Qadir Baloch, Salahuddin Tirmizi, Tehmina Daultana, Arshad Khan Leghari and Chaudhry Jaffar Iqbal.

Javed Hashmi is the only member of the committee who has been openly supporting the demand for new provinces.

Speaking in the National Assembly last week, the veteran leader from Multan said he wanted his party to take the lead and announce “creation of three to four new provinces” in Punjab. He said that with increase in population new provinces had become the need of the hour.

|In April while taking part in the debate in the assembly on the presidential address to parliament, Mr Hashmi had proposed splitting up the four provinces into up to 16 for good administration.