PROVISIONAL PROVINCIAL STATUS TO GILGIT BALTISTAN
CONTEXT
• Paksitan announced to elevate Gilgit Baltistan (GB) to the status of a full-fledged province with all constitutional rights.
• GB is the northernmost territory administered by Pakistan providing the country’s only territorial frontier, and thus a land route, with China, where it meets the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
PRESENT STATUS
• Though Pakistan, like India, links G-B’s fate to that of Kashmir, its administrative arrangements are different from those in PoK.
• While PoK has its own Constitution that sets out its powers and their limits vis-à-vis Pakistan, G-B has been ruled mostly by executive fiat.
• Until 2009, the region was simply called Northern Areas. It got its present name only with the Gilgit-Baltistan (Empowerment and Self- Governance) Order, 2009, which replaced the Northern Areas Legislative Council with the Legislative Assembly.
• The NALC was an elected body, but had no more than an advisory role to the Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas, who ruled from Islamabad. The Legislative Assembly is only a slight improvement. It has 24 directly elected members and nine nominated ones.
WHY PROVINCIAL STATUS?
• It may be linked to CPEC and chinese interests. Provincial status will give Islamabad more control over GB where strategic CPEC passes through.
• Push might have well come from India’s reassertion of its claims after the August 5,2019 reorgansiation of Jammu & Kashmir.
• Pakistan Army is also interested in provincial status to GB
• The people of G-B have been demanding for years that it be made a part of Pakistan, they do not have the same constitutional rights Pakistanis have.
IMPORTANCE OF GB
• China–Pakistan Economic Corridor is passing through GB which is strategically and economically critical for China as well as Pakistan.
• Important glaciers are located in GB which is source of drinking water as well as irrigation in Pakistan.
• Hydro-electric potential of Indus River makes it vital for energy security.
• Strategic location as to G-B’s west is Afghanistan, to its south is Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,and to the east J&K.
INDIA’S REACTION
• India has clearly conveyed to Pakistan that entire UT of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, including areas of G-B, are integral part of India and asked Pakistan to immediately vacate from the Indian territory of Gilgit-Baltistan.