MULTAN: A meeting of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) core committee is going to be held within a week in which the party will come up with its point of view on the issue of creation of a south Punjab province, says Jahangir Khan Tareen.

Speaking to Dawn a day after eight PML-N legislators quit the party to form a front of their own with a pledge to create a new province, Mr Tareen said he was personally in favour of a new province having three divisions of Multan, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan but the party’s core committee would declare its official stance in a formal meeting within a week.

“I am in favour of creation of one province but don’t support the idea to create Bahawalpur a province. Bahawalpur should instead be made the capital of the proposed province,” said the PTI’s former general secretary.

Highlighting the fact that the area is being ignored for long as far as the distribution of resources is concerned, he said the creation of a new province would also help strengthen the federation.

“The size of Punjab was further increased by including Bahawalpur State in it when the one unit was abolished,” he said.

He said that in order to improve the governance Punjab should be divided and a new province established on administrative rather on linguistic grounds.

“Creation of new province on linguistic and cultural grounds will complicate the issue.”

He said the size of three divisions was sufficient to be given the status of a province and neither Jhang nor Bhakkar be included in it.

Meanwhile, Rana Qasim Noon, one of the PML-N legislators who announced being part of Janobi Punjab Soba Mahaaz after ditching the PML-N, said Mianwali, Bhakkar and Jhang should be included in the new province as these districts are considered part of south Punjab. He said the new province should be established on administrative grounds. He reiterated that there were others who would join the front.

“The area has been kept deprived and the party leaders did not pay attention to our repeated requests to end the backwardness of this area,” he said. He said the Punjab government even failed to establish the sub civil secretariat in Multan which was promised.

He said the members of the front could join a party or go for an alliance with it if it includes the creation of a new province in its manifesto.

“We are in the initial stage of our struggle. Our doors are open for all political parties and any decision to join or make alliance will be taken with the consent of all members of the front,” he said.

He made it clear that the new front wanted one province and opposed the creation of Bahawalpur province and that’s why it had included one parliamentarian from each of three districts of Bahawalpur division – Rahim Yar Khan, Bahawalnagar and Bahawalpur,” he said.

Tehmina Daultana of the PML-N said it was her party that had the resolutions passed in favour of two new provinces. “However, it is not the right time to do so as elections are near and the process to create provinces needs time,” she said.“We spent 46pc of Punjab’s budget on southern Punjab. A number of development projects were initiated and we are proud of it,” she said.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2018