Speaking to a private news channel, Ahsan Iqbal said the country’s growing population and administrative challenges made it difficult to govern large provinces from a single city.
He said Sindh, stretching from Badin to Ghotki, could not effectively be governed from Karachi, while Punjab, extending from Rahim Yar Khan to Attock, could not be efficiently administered from Lahore.
He added that running Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from Peshawar, covering areas from Dera Ismail Khan to Chitral, and administering Balochistan from Quetta, covering areas from Pasni to Zhob and Qila Saifullah, was also administratively difficult.
Ahsan Iqbal said the solution was either to establish 160 empowered district governments or create 12 to 15 provinces. He noted that Pakistan’s neighboring country had created more than a dozen new provinces since 1947.
The federal minister said the existing centralized system was facing increasing pressure due to population growth and had become overloaded. He stressed the need to create greater administrative balance.
Ahsan Iqbal said he did not want to make a controversial statement and acknowledged that the Sindh Assembly had the right to pass its own resolution on the matter.
He added that the people of Pakistan needed better education, healthcare, sanitation and access to clean drinking water, saying these issues were far more important than any political slogan or the interests of any political party.
