Body established for the purpose of creating the province of South Punjab Seven-member committee to present report within the next month.
ISLAMABAD – The Speaker of the National Assembly (NA), Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, has established a special committee in order to facilitate the formation of a new province and the required revisions to the constitution.
South Punjab is a proposed new province that would take up the southernmost portion of the existing province of Punjab and consist of the regions that are inhabited primarily by Saraiki people. The planned Saraikistan region of Punjab comprises Bahawalpur, Multan, and Dera Ghazi Khan divisions. It accounts for approximately 52% of the total land area and 32% of the total population of the Punjab province.
Members of the committee are Syed Khursheed Shah, Murtaza Javed Abbasi, Khalid Hussain Magsi, and Naveed Aamir Jeeva. They all serve in a ministerial capacity at the federal level.
In addition to them, legislators Ramesh Kumar, Nuzhat Pathan, and MNA Sabir Hussain who defected from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have been added to the committee.
The bill to alter articles 25B, 51, 63B, 92, and 106 of the Constitution of Pakistan will be examined by the committee, as will the ToRs.
Within the next thirty days, the committee will provide a report on the subject issue.
In 2012, motions calling for the establishment of a new province in the state of Punjab were approved by both the Punjab Assembly and the National Assembly. Both the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz voted for the adoption of these resolutions, which ultimately led to their success.
During the elections in 2013, the PPP made an effort to sway Saraiki voters’ sentiments on the establishment of Saraikistan as a province. However, they were only granted one seat in the National Assembly for the Saraikistan area.
In 2018, the PTI made a campaign pledge to establish a new province in South Punjab within the first one hundred days of their administration, should they be elected to office. In South Punjab, the PTI was victorious in the election and was able to secure 30 of the available 50 seats in the National Assembly.
Mohsin Leghari, a member of the PTI who serves as an MPA in the Punjab Assembly, introduced a resolution on August 15, 2018, calling for the establishment of a new province in South Punjab.
The law proposing the establishment of South Punjab province was approved by the Senate on January 18, 2022. This legislation had support from both the PTI and the PPP.
