Why Pakistan needs administrative restructuring

Pakistan’s administrative map is carrying a population load it was never designed for. We are now a country of more than 240 million people.

Punjab alone is home to over 127 million people, Sindh more than 55 million and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over 40 million. These numbers matter beyond being a headcount from a census. They help decide how far the government has to reach, how many people local institutions must serve, how development funds are shared and how fast the state can act.

Yet the spaces where political power, financial decisions and government action are concentrated remain very few. At the national level, Pakistan has only 266 directly elected National Assembly seats for a population of 241.5 million, averaging roughly one directly elected representative for every 908,000 people.

Overtly concentrated

Government is heavily concentrated in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta. Ministries, senior bureaucracies, large hospitals, universities, courts and development authorities gather around provincial capitals. Over time, economic activity follows them, as do jobs, professional services, infrastructure and investment. Such concentration has consequences for regions farther away.

A citizen in southern Punjab experiences provincial government differently from someone in Lahore. The same holds for Hazara in relation to Peshawar, or for distant districts in Sindh and Balochistan. Geography eventually becomes administrative distance. Files move through longer chains, senior decision-makers remain elsewhere and development priorities compete for attention with those of much larger metropolitan centres. This is exactly why the debate over new administrative units deserves to be linked directly with prosperity.

In economics, government exerts a gravitational pull. A centre of administration creates surrounding departments, courts, universities, hospitals, infrastructure, housing, services and jobs, and this draws businesses towards it. It also fosters professional communities; roads are built or improved, land prices rise and new markets form. All these dynamics can be seen across Pakistan around existing provincial capitals. There is, therefore, no real reason to assume that the same institutional pull would not help build additional regional growth centres.

South Punjab is an obvious example of this administrative logic. The establishment of the South Punjab Secretariat in 2020 acknowledged the problem caused by placing all authority in Lahore. One of its stated purposes was to allow people in the area to have their issues resolved closer to where they live. This recognition was important because it accepted that proximity to government has both economic and social value.

Similarly, Hazara has demanded a separate province for many years. In August 2026, proponents again linked the demand with demographic growth, governance and administrative feasibility. Previously, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly had adopted resolutions in favour of a separate province of Hazara. Bahawalpur has a similar history of demand for a separate province, and that demand persists. A rally calling for the restoration of the province of Bahawalpur was held in August 2026.

New centres of gravity

Although each of these regions has its own history and political environment, what unites them is the desire for better access to the state’s institutions, greater representation and a greater share of development. Giving these areas their own “economic centre of gravity” would involve creating a new provincial capital with all its attendant institutions: universities would expand and hospitals would gain specialised departments, among other things, providing professional employment opportunities.

As the private sector responds to public investment and the movement of people, a region that relies heavily on a distant provincial capital for the income generated by administrative activity will, over time, begin to develop its own administrative and commercial ecosystems. This is when the issue of prosperity becomes most relevant.

Balanced development is also difficult to achieve where opportunity is spatially concentrated. Young people should not have to migrate to Lahore, Karachi or other large cities for opportunities such as quality education, decent jobs and access to specialist services. Establishing other centres of administration could help spread some of these opportunities.

There is also a simple administrative benefit. Governments can gain a more thorough overview of the people within smaller jurisdictions, attend to needs specific to the district and monitor the progress of schools, hospitals, roads and other such projects. Regional budgets can better reflect such differences in conditions.

Lessons from overseas

Regional experience offers similar examples. India created Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand in 2000 to give greater administrative and development focus to distinct regions, while Bangladesh later created Mymensingh as a separate administrative division.

Another example is Indonesia, which in 2022 created new provinces in Papua, stating that the goals were to shorten administrative reach, improve public services, make development more focused and reduce regional disparities. President Joko Widodo called the division an attempt to make development more equitable across a territory too large to be managed in this way. The comparison is relevant to Pakistan because of its own combination of population growth, geographical distance and differential development.

Local government is especially important. Prosperity spreads more effectively when authority reaches municipalities and districts rather than remaining concentrated at the provincial tier. Provincial restructuring can create the larger framework, while stronger local institutions carry that change into towns and communities.

The process also has to reflect public aspiration. Credible surveys, consultations and economic feasibility work can help establish where demand is strongest and what form people expect restructuring to take. The Constitution already provides a demanding route: Article 239 requires a constitutional amendment to receive two-thirds support in both Houses of Parliament, while an amendment altering a province’s limits also requires two-thirds approval of the affected provincial assembly. That framework gives administrative restructuring the scale of national reform it deserves.

Pakistan’s population will continue to grow. Its secondary cities will expand, regional economies will become more important and pressure on existing provincial centres will increase. Governance structures eventually have to respond to that reality. A more distributed administrative system offers a route towards a more distributed economy as well. More centres of government can mean more centres of education, healthcare, employment, investment and political representation.

For a country seeking broader prosperity, that is a possibility worth examining seriously.