Awami National Party (ANP) wants to change the name of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) to Pakhtunkhwa as the party along with BNP, and MQM recently submitted this proposal as part of deliberations on the 27th Constitutional Amendment.
The ANP argues that including the word “Khyber,” which is the name of a specific district and a major mountain pass, is inappropriate because other provinces in Pakistan do not include district names in their official titles.
The party has historically advocated for the name “Pakhtunkhwa” (land of the Pashtuns) to give the province’s majority Pashtun population an identity reflected in the provincial name, similar to Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan.
The current name, “Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” was adopted in 2010 through the 18th Constitutional Amendment. At that time, the ANP had insisted on just “Pakhtunkhwa,” but the word “Khyber” was added as a compromise to address the concerns of non-Pashtun communities, such as the Hindko-speaking people in the Hazara region, who felt excluded by an exclusively Pashtun name.
Moreover, the committee approved the provision for the establishment of constitutional courts and also passed an important amendment regarding pending cases. Under the amendment, the time for deciding pending cases has been increased from six months to one year. If no action is taken within a year, the case will be considered disposed of.
Moreover, the MQM’s proposal to directly allocate funds to local government representatives was also agreed upon.
Sources further revealed that there was a principled agreement on increasing seats in the Balochistan Assembly, though the exact number of new seats is yet to be decided.
