PM forms committee on Gilgit-Baltistan provincial status
Aaj News names Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in the move but gives no composition, terms of reference or timeline, and cites no official notification.
ISLAMABAD: A committee has been constituted to take up the demand that Gilgit-Baltistan be given the status of a constitutional province, according to an Aaj News report that also named Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in connection with the move.
The report did not say what role the Pakistan Peoples Party chairman plays: whether he is a member of the committee, its head, or was consulted before it was formed. It gave no details of the committee's membership, its terms of reference or a timeline for its work. No notification or statement from the Prime Minister's Office was quoted, and Skardu Times could not independently confirm the composition or mandate of the body.
Gilgit-Baltistan is currently administered under a self-governance framework rather than holding the constitutional standing of Pakistan's four provinces. Its residents do not elect representatives to the National Assembly or the Senate, and the region's courts operate under a separate arrangement.
Political parties, lawyers' bodies and students' groups in Gilgit, Skardu and other districts have for years demanded that the region be declared a province, with seats in parliament and representation on constitutional bodies. The demand has been raised repeatedly in the Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly.
What the committee is expected to produce, and by when, is not clear from the report. It did not say whether the committee would include representatives of the Gilgit-Baltistan government, the assembly, opposition parties or civil society, or whether its findings would go to the federal cabinet or to parliament.
Any change in the region's status would require federal legislation and, in the view of politicians from the region, a constitutional amendment: a process that would need agreement among the federal parties and a decision on how the region's representation would be weighted.
Neither the Gilgit-Baltistan government nor the federal information ministry was quoted in the report, and no date has been given for the committee to meet.
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