LAHORE (The Thursday Times) — Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Thursday urged Pakistan’s political parties to settle the question of new provinces through a referendum, saying the decision should rest with the people.
“We all talk about democracy. All of us in parliament say the people are supreme,” Naqvi told reporters at the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency office in Lahore. “So my one request to all political parties is that on an issue like this, if surveys are showing a majority in favour of new provinces, they should hold a referendum.”
“If the people say they should not be created, I am 100 per cent with them. If the people say they should be created, then they should be created,” he said.
‘Every party has its own stance’
Naqvi said every party had the right to hold a view different from another party’s or an individual’s, and that no one was being obliged to accept his proposal. Some parties, he said, had stated their position openly, naming the Pakistan Peoples Party, while others had not done so officially.
“I think the best solution is to take the people’s opinion,” he said. If parties believed there was a better solution, he added, that too should be put to the public.
The debate over new provinces has grown in recent weeks. On Sunday, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said Pakistan could have as many as 12 provinces, provided they were drawn on administrative rather than ethnic or linguistic lines.
What the Constitution requires
The Constitution allows the prime minister to put a matter of national importance to a referendum, but only after a joint sitting of parliament approves it. A referendum on its own cannot create a province. Under Article 239, changing a province’s boundaries needs a constitutional amendment passed by two-thirds of each house of parliament and by two-thirds of the affected province’s own assembly, as TT has set out in detail.
