Sindh back to 5 divisions after 11 years

The Sindh government on Sunday issued a notification for the restoration of five divisions in the province namely Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur and Larkana. Sindh Revenue Board Secretary issued notification number PS/SMBR/2011 stating ‘in exercise of powers conferred under Section 5 of the Sindh Land Revenue Act, 1967 as amended through Sindh Land Revenue (Amendment) Ordinance 2011, the Government of Sindh is pleased to divide the province of Sindh into the divisions with the limits and areas on which they are existing now.’
Acting Sindh Governor Nisar Ahmed Khuhro had on Saturday issued an amendment ordinance of Land Revenue Act 1967, through which divisions and districts have been restored in of before 2001. After the issuance of this notification, all five divisions of Sindh: Karachi Division, Hyderabad Division, Mirpurkhas Division, Sukkur Division and Larkana Division, have been restored on their previous statuses after 11 years.
The commissionerate system was the last to be restored in Sindh as the other three provinces of Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have already adopted the previous system. After the introduction of local bodies system in 2001, dual policies were adopted in Sindh as the Karachi division, which consisted of five districts: East, West, Central, South and Malir, were merged into a single district while Hyderabad, Dadu, Larkana and Jacobabad were bifurcated and six new districts were carved out from them. The Hyderabad district was bifurcated on linguistic basis and all Sindhi-dominated areas like Matiari, Tando Allahyar, Tando Muhammad Khan were separated and the Hyderabad district was left only comprising Urdu-speaking dominated areas. In Sukkur, the Sukkur city taluka was separated which was Urdu-speaking dominated and the same situation prevailed in Mirpurkhas and Nawabshah. In Karachi, however, the Sindhi-dominated district of Malir was merged with the Karachi district.
At that time, the attempt to bifurcate Sindh on linguistic basis was resisted and different quarters warned that such bifurcation will create new problems and create hurdles in its attempt to merge Sindhi-Urdu-speaking population into each other.
Meanwhile, after 11 long years, Sindh has been restored to its original shape and it is expected that another notification regarding the restoration of districts will be issued also. The sources said that the notification of appointments of Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners will also be issued soon.