LARKANA: Speakers at a seminar have said that the country’s debt burden and existing resources cannot bear the additional strain of creating new provinces and that the practice of turning the country into an experimental laboratory must end.

The seminar, titled ‘Sindh Dharti Maa Hai’, was organised by the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Larkana chapter here.

The speakers, including PPP-Sindh President Nisar Khuhro, Senator Zameer Ghumro, MNAs Khursheed Junejo, Aijaz Jakhrani and Nafisa Shah, MPAs Jamil Soomro, Gul Muhammed Jakhrani, Khair Muhammed and Abdul Fatah Bhutto and journalist Nisar Khokhar, categorically rejected the division of Sindh.

In a resolution, they said that, under the garb of creating new provinces, attempts were being made to target the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, provincial autonomy and the 18th Amendment.

PPP leader Khuhro warns of strong reaction if ‘anyone casts an evil eye on Sindh’

In another resolution, the speakers noted that, despite the Sindh Assembly having already passed a resolution rejecting any change in provincial boundaries or the division of the province, federal ministers’ talk of holding a referendum on new provinces was unconstitutional, since, under the Constitution, the authority to create new provinces rests solely with the provincial assembly concerned.

They called on federal ministers to stop harping on about new provinces.

Another resolution warned the federal government that if it got a resolution in favour of new provinces passed by the National Assembly or the Senate, the Sindh Assembly would once again pass a resolution against new provinces, thereby rejecting the National Assembly resolution.

Yet another resolution declared that a new province was unacceptable under any circumstances, even in the name of devolving power to the grassroots level. It said that those criticising Sindh’s local government system should first get local government elections held in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Islamabad and show the results.

Speaking as the chief guest, Mr Khuhro said Sindh produced wheat, gas and oil, yet the province was given nothing in return, while its resources were being handed over to other provinces.

“If anyone casts an evil eye on Sindh, Sindh will respond with full force,” he said, adding that history was witness to the people’s power, which had stopped the Kalabagh Dam from being built, and that they would not allow Sindh to be divided either.

After the passage of the Sindh Assembly’s resolution, federal ministers should stop dishonouring the Constitution by talking about new provinces, he warned.

“After the Sindh Assembly’s resolution, there will be no debate on new provinces in the National Assembly or the Senate,” Mr Khuhro said, declaring that if the moment came for Sindh, every worker and every individual would be out on the streets.

Addressing Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi directly, he said: “You will never become prime minister. You have no public support.”

Senator Zameer Ghumro said he was surprised by the statement made by the climate minister, while the prime minister himself had said that no such proposal existed.

He said that throughout the past 100 years of history, it had always been the people of Larkana who had saved Sindh. He said the enemies of Sindh would never secure a majority in the Sindh Assembly to create new provinces within Sindh.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2026