Pakistan/ Bahawalpur

West Pakistan was the popular and sometimes official name of the western wing of Pakistan until 1971, when the eastern wing (East Pakistan) became independent as Bangladesh. more...

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The politically dominant western wing was composed of three Governor's provinces (North-West Frontier Province, Punjab and Sind), one Chief Commissioner's province (Balochistan), the Baluchistan States Union, several other princely states (notably Bahawalpur, Chitral, Dir, Hunza, Khairpur and Swat), the Federal Capital Territory (around Karachi) and the tribal areas.

The eastern wing formed the single province of East Bengal (including the former Assam district of Sylhet), which despite having half of the population had a disproportionately small number of seats in the Constituent Assembly. This inequality of the two wings and the geographical distance between them was believed to be holding up the adoption of a new constitution. To diminish the differences between the two regions, the government decided to reorganise the country as two distinct provinces under the One Unit policy announced by Prime Minister Chaudhry Muhammad Ali on 22nd November, 1954.

History

The province of West Pakistan was created in 14th October 1955 by the merger of the provinces, states and tribal areas of the western wing. The province was composed of twelve divisions and the provincial capital was established at Lahore. The province of East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan with the provincial capital at Dhaka. The federal government moved in 1959 from Karachi to Rawalpindi (provisional capital until Islamabad was finished), whilst the federal legislature moved to Dhaka.

West Pakistan formed a seemingly homogeneous block but with marked linguistic and ethnic distinctions and the One Unit policy was regarded as a rational administrative reform which would reduce expenditure and eliminate provincial prejudices. However with the military coup of 1958, trouble loomed for the province when the office of Chief Minister was abolished and the President took over executive powers for West Pakistan. The province of West Pakistan was dissolved in July 1970 by President Yahya Khan.

General elections held in December 1970 saw the Awami League under Mujibur Rahman win an overall majority of seats in parliament (all but two of the 162 seats allocated to East Pakistan). The Awami League advocated greater autonomy for East Pakistan but the military government did not permit Mujibur Rahman to form a government.

On March 25th 1971, East Pakistan attempted to secede and civil war began between the Pakistani military and the Mukhti Bahini. The resulting refugee crisis led to the intervention by India, eventually leading to the surrender of the Pakistani Army. East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh and the term West Pakistan became redundant.

Read more at Wikipedia.org