Importance of Gilgit-Baltistan

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that his government would give the region “provisional provincial status”. 1 November has been observed every year in Gilgit-Baltistan as “Independence Day”.

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Key-Points

When that happens, G-B will become the fifth province of Pakistan, although the region is claimed by India as part of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu & Kashmir as it existed in 1947 at its accession to India.

Gilgit-Baltistan 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. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has made the region vital for both countries.

To G-B’s west is Afghanistan, to its south is Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and to the east J&K.

The plan to grant G-B provincial status gathered speed over the last one year due to CPEC and Chinese interest, as well as India’s reassertion of its claims after the August 5, 2019 reorganisation of Jammu & Kashmir.

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.

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