Inter Provincial Coordination: Federal Legislative List Part II, Section 13

The recent developments after the passage of the 18th amendment in 2010 have created a hope that interprovincial and intergovernmental issues will now be taken seriously in Pakistan. But to assess whether this hope is based on solid foundations or it is just a false hope requires a thorough scoping study of interprovincial matters and coordination or in other words intergovernmental issues in Pakistan. There is a need to trace the roots of intergovernmental forums in Pakistan and see how were intergovernmental affairs dealt in Pakistan since its birth in 1947? What kind of mechanisms and institutional forums were formed to address the interprovincial matters before the creation of Interprovincial Coordination Committee (IPCC), Interprovincial Conference (IPC) and Council of Common Interests (CCI) in early 1970s? Whether creation of IPCC, IPC and CCI as interprovincial forums had any positive impact on interprovincial harmony in Pakistan? What was the structure of IPCC and IPC and how it evolved into the creation of a separate full-fledged ministry and a division of Inter Provincial Coordination (IPC)? What changes have been brought in IPC and how far IPC role and powers have been enhanced after the eighteenth amendment? So far what role IPC has played in resolving the matters of interprovincial harmony. In this study the focus will remain on IPC while CCI is only discussed when necessary because a separate study on CCI is conducted under same UNDP project, “strengthening participatory federalism and decentralization”.