Pakistan has decided to elevate Gilgit-Baltistan’s status to that of a
full-fledged province.It is located arounds the borders China in the North, Afghanistan in the west and Kashmir in the south east. It shares a geographical boundary with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and India considers it as part of the undivided Jammu and Kashmir, while Pakistan sees it as a separate from PoK.
It is an autonomous region now and with this elevation, it will
become the 5th province of the country.Pakistan has four provinces namely Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh.In 1999 Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that the people of Gilgit-Baltistan are Pakistani citizens and directed the federal government to start appropriate administrative and legislative measures. In 2009 The Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order was introduced, whereby the Northern Areas were renamed as Gilgit-Baltistan and the region was given province-like status but without representation in Parliament. A committee constituted by the federal government proposed giving Gilgit-Baltistan the status of a province in 2015 . A new order was introduced which transferred all powers of the Gilgit-Baltistan council to its assembly in 2018.China Pakistan Economic CorridorIt is the flagship project of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).The bilateral project between Pakistan and China intends to promote connectivity across Pakistan with a network of highways, railways, and pipelines accompanied by energy, industrial and other infrastructure development projects.
Originally valued at USD 46 billion, the projects were worth over USD 60 billion as of 2017. It links the Western part of China (Xinjiang) to the Gwadar Port in Balochistan, Pakistan via Khunjerab Pass in Northern Pakistan.India has protested to China over the CPEC as it is being laid through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.The British sold the area , along with the rest of Jammu and Kashmir, to the Dogra ruler of Jammu, Gulab Singh, after defeating the Sikh army in 1846, but retained controlled over the area through a lease extracted from the Maharaja.This lease was last renewed in 1935. In 1947, a British army officer of the rank of Colonel imprisoned Maharaja Hari Singh’s governor in the region, and handed over the area for accession to Pakistan.Gilgit- Baltistan is part of J&K and any such move would seriously damage Pakistan’s Kashmir case.
Two UN resolutions of August 13, 1948 and January 5, 1949 clearly established a link between GB and the Kashmir issue.Making the region its fifth province would thus violate the Karachi Agreement — perhaps the only instrument that provides doubtful legal authority to Pakistan’s administration of GB — as well as the UN resolutions that would damage its position on the Kashmir issue. Any such move would also be violative of the 1963 Pak-China Boundary Agreement that calls for the sovereign authority to reopen negotiations with China “after the settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India” and of the 1972 Simla Agreement that mentions that “neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation”.
