LAHORE: Various plans to divide Lahore into two, three or four districts have been deferred after the authorities concerned couldn’t reach a consensus on the matter due to various administrative, functional and political issues.

The plans were aimed at improving governance and service delivery in the provincial capital—the second largest city and metropolitan corporation of the country, Dawn has learnt.

“The initial plan was introduced in 2017 under which Lahore was to be divided into four districts. The plan was devised after a massive increase in the city district’s population that, at that time, had reached around 10.1m,” an official source in the Punjab government told Dawn on Sunday.

He said that initially, a committee, headed by the Lahore commissioner, was also formed and it had reached the consensus to go ahead with the plan since Lahore, according to the committee members, had become difficult to manage with the existing administrative and functional structure due to increasing population with massive horizontal growth of the city.

The official said that with the lapse of time uncertain political situations started developing in 2017 and the proposal was dropped. However, in 2019, the proposal was revived with a suggestion to reduce the number of districts from four to three. In 2020, another proposal, apparently more viable, was floated.

According to the new proposal, Lahore was to be divided into two districts. This proposal was finally declared as viable in a meeting on Dec 3, 2020. It suggested bifurcation of Lahore City district into City and Saddar districts with creation of five new tehsils — Ferozewala, Thokar Niaz Baig, Kahna, Kot Abdul Malik and Harbanspura — in the two proposed districts.

The then Lahore DC had also asked to expedite the preparation of a PC-2 for carrying out impact assessment study for geographic and social/cultural cohesion by hiring consultancy services under the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority Rules with a direction to retain the historical character of the city during the division.

The City district was to have tehsils of City, Thokar Niaz Baig, Model Town, Kahna and Raiwind while the Saddar district was proposed to have Ferozewala, Kot Abdul Malik, Shalimar, Cantt and Harbanspura tehsils.

The City tehsil would include qanoongois of Lahore Khas, Shahdara, Naulakha, Sandah and some others mentioned in the master plan, including the Ravi Urban Development Authority (Ruda) and revenue estates of Sharaqpur tehsil. It was suggested that the proposed Thokar Niaz Baig tehsil would include Thokar Niaz Baig, Chuhng and Maraka qanoongois; Model Town (Ichhra and Nawan Kot qanoongois) Kahna (Kahna, Kamahan and Pandoki qanoongois) while Raiwind tehsil was planned to have Raiwind, Paji, Manga and five mauzas from Kasur district.

In this proposal, the areas of qanoongois proposed to be added to Ferozewala tehsil were suggested to be taken from the GT Road to the eastern side, including Kala Khatai Road till Shalimar tehsil along with four Ruda revenue estates of Muridke tehsil. Kot Abdul Malik tehsil was supposed to have areas from the GT Road to the west side, including Lahore-Sheikhupura road and Lahore-Jaranwala road up to Sharaqpur tehsil.

The Shalimar tehsil was proposal to have Baghbanpura, Lakhodair and Benaseen, Cantt tehsil was supposed to have Cantt, Heer and Jahman and Harbanspura tehsil was proposed to be consisting of Jallo, Fatehgarh, Barki and Bhangali qanoongois.

The official said a lot of work was done on the proposal of 2020 but later, it slowed down due to lack of political will and other administrative and functional issues. He said when Parvez Elahi became the chief minister, he also ordered the authorities to revive the proposal with a direction to divide Lahore into three districts (the proposal of 2019). He directed the authorities to also work on creation of some more districts in Punjab, including Wazirabad. Finally on Oct 30 in an event in the city, he announced to divide Lahore into three districts. However, there was no suggestion as to what would be the third district. That proposal has also been deferred now.

When asked about the reasons behind frequent delays and deferment in materialising the proposals, the official said there were also concerns raised by the senior officials over the proposals as they suggested to better increase the number of tehsils instead of dividing Lahore into two, three or four districts.

“The senior officials were of the view that if various civic agencies, such as the Lahore Metropolitan Corporation, Lahore Development Authority, Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa), Lahore Waste Management Company, Parks and Horticulture Authority, Walled City of Lahore Authority, Lahore Parking Company and Traffic Engineering and Transport Planning Agency, all working for one Lahore city district were not divided, the creation of new districts with division/separation of only revenue affairs wouldn’t be a wise decision. They were also of the view that Lahore was the hub of the country in terms of its culture, traditions, values, heritage and history and its division into more districts might affect its unique identity,” the official explained while quoting some officers as having said in various meetings on the matter.

He added that they also cited various issues in creation of some new districts in Punjab, including Wazirabad, Kot Addu and Talagang, where no officer was ready to go due to lack of certain administrative structures and offices etc. It was also proposed that, instead of making more districts in Lahore, the number of assistant commissioner-led tehsils should be increased from five to nine or the number of ACs should be raised from five to nine to be in nine defunct constituent towns (now called as zones) of the city districts, including Allama Iqbal, Samanabad, Data Ganj Bakhsh, Gulberg, Shalimar, Wagah and Aziz Bhatti towns.

“But it was also not done unfortunately,” the official said, suggesting to the government to become serious in taking action to divide Lahore into more districts as it was the need of the hour to improve governance, service delivery etc in the best public interest The Lahore deputy commissioner was not available for comments.

Published in Dawn, January 23th, 2023