Bringing Government Closer

Imagine a farmer from Rajanpur, in the far south of Punjab, who needs to fight a land dispute in court. His nearest High Court bench and most of the province’s real decision-making power sit in Lahore, a journey of over 500 kilometres and nearly ten hours by road. He isn’t alone. Millions of Pakistanis live this same reality every day; the government institutions face significant challenges in reaching citizens effectively across such a large and growing population. This is not a small inconvenience. It is the core reason why Pakistan’s debate over creating new provinces has become one of the most important conversations in the country today.

A Population That Has Outgrown Its Map

According to the final results of the 2023 census by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Pakistan’s population stood at 241.5 million, growing at 2.55% a year, among the fastest growth rates in the region. By 2026, officials estimate the number has crossed 260 million. Yet the country is still governed through the same four provinces it has had since 1970.

The imbalance is staggering. Punjab alone is home to about 127.7 million people, nearly 53% of Pakistan’s entire population. To put that in perspective, Punjab has more people than every single member state of the European Union, and if it were an independent country, it would rank among the 11 most populous nations on Earth. One provincial government, headquartered in Lahore, is expected to plan schools, hospitals, police, and courts for all of them.

Compare this to how other countries have grown. Afghanistan, a far smaller and less developed economy than Pakistan, already has 34 provinces. Pakistan’s administrative structure now faces pressures that have intensified with rapid population growth and expanding regional needs.

The Human Cost of Distant Government

Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal has put the scale of the problem in stark numbers; Pakistan currently has only 1,170 public offices to represent and serve 260 million citizens. He argues that closing this gap would require somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 local government positions, a level of representation the current four-province system was never designed to deliver.

This isn’t an abstract statistic. It shows up in real, everyday frustration; a mother in interior Sindh who must travel for hours to reach a hospital with a working maternity ward; a small trader in Balochistan, a province covering 44% of Pakistan’s entire land area but with one of its lowest populations, whose nearest government office is a full day’s journey away; a family in Hazara, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, applying for a domicile certificate or filing a police report, only to be told the relevant authority sits hundreds of kilometres away in Peshawar. Ahsan Iqbal has also pointed out that although the federal government devolved 17 subjects to the provinces back in 2010, the provinces never passed a single one of those powers further down to local governments, meaning power simply piled up at the top instead of reaching the people who needed it.

More Provinces Mean Problems Get Solved Faster

Pakistan’s four provinces were drawn decades ago, when the population was a fraction of what it is today. As cities and regions have grown, the honest truth is that the scale and geographic diversity of the provinces can make effective administration increasingly challenging, whether that’s southern Punjab, Hazara, interior Sindh, or rural Balochistan. Smaller provinces fix this directly: a government that oversees fewer people and a smaller area can build roads faster, staff hospitals more reliably, process paperwork sooner, and respond to local emergencies without weeks of delay.

This is exactly why the demand for new provinces has been building since at least 2008, not because regions want to pull apart from Pakistan, but because people across the country want government that actually works for them, quickly and locally. Smaller, well-resourced administrative units are consistently better at converting national development budgets into real results, new schools built, new clinics staffed, new roads paved, because there is simply less distance, in both kilometres and bureaucracy, between the decision-maker and the citizen.

Why Smaller Units Mean Stronger Administration

New provinces would mean shorter distances between citizens and decision-makers, more local government offices, and administrations small enough to actually monitor and improve service delivery in health, education, and policing. They would also mean more seats in the Senate, since Senate representation is equal across provinces, giving long-overlooked regions a genuine voice in how federal resources, distributed through the National Finance Commission (NFC) award, are shared. Since the 18th Constitutional Amendment further increased provincial powers and financial resources, provincial status has become even more meaningful, not just symbolic, but a direct route to better-funded, better-represented local government.

A Reform Worth Doing Carefully

None of this means the process should be rushed. Building new provincial secretariats, assemblies and bureaucracies costs money, and Pakistan’s Constitution, under Article 239(4), requires a two-thirds vote in the affected province’s own assembly before any boundary can even be changed. That is exactly why experts are calling for an independent national commission of demographers, economists, and constitutional experts to assess each proposal on population, geography, and public consent, backed by public hearings and, where appropriate, regional referendums.

Conclusion

The case for more provinces is ultimately not about dividing Pakistan, it is about finishing what devolution started. A farmer in Rajanpur, a mother in interior Sindh, a trader in Balochistan, and a family in Hazara all deserve a government that is close enough to actually reach them. With a population nearing 260 million and only four provinces standing in the way, the real question is no longer whether Pakistan can afford to create more provinces, it’s whether it can afford not to.