Islamabad Set To Get Its Own Assembly, Mayor, Government

New Blueprint for the Federal Capital's Future Placed Before the Prime Minister

ISLAMABAD: Islamabad is about to stop looking like a federal enclave and start looking like a province at least on paper. A high-level special committee has handed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif a draft blueprint that would give the federal capital its own assembly, its own chief executive, and 27 administrative departments, all while the wider national debate over creating new provinces continues to simmer.

Islamabad New Administrative Model

The draft puts Islamabad at the front of that queue. Rather than wait for a broader provinces settlement, the government has moved to convert the capital into a new administrative model first, using it as the opening test case for devolved city governance in Pakistan.

The numbers in the draft are specific. It proposes a 27-member Islamabad Assembly, with 21 seats filled through direct public vote seven per National Assembly constituency in the capital. Five seats go to women, and one seat goes to minorities, giving the assembly a defined representation structure from day one.

Mayor or Chief Minister?

At the top, the draft recommends a chief executive holding the title of either Chief Minister or Mayor, a naming decision that itself signals how far this model edges toward provincial status. That figure would oversee all 27 administrative departments now proposed to sit under Islamabad's own government rather than federal control.

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The split of responsibilities matters just as much as the titles. Health, education, environment and urban services would move to local government's plate entirely. Law and order, along with master planning, stay with the federation run either through a federal ministry or the governor's office. The Election Commission would run Islamabad Assembly elections, giving the capital's local politics the same electoral machinery as the provinces.

CDA Faces Major Change

The biggest single shift targets the Capital Development Authority. The draft recommends stripping CDA of all its powers and duties and handing them to Islamabad's local government outright alongside every other institution currently operating under the Local Government Act. That local government would then write its own rules of business, rather than operating under CDA-era procedures.

Administratively, the draft calls for a Chief Secretary and four secretaries to run Islamabad's day-to-day affairs, each secretary assigned a distinct administrative group and set of departments. Federal institutions that already serve the whole country would keep operating inside Islamabad exactly as they do now this reshuffle targets city governance, not national infrastructure.

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The committee behind the draft carries serious political weight. Federal ministers Ahsan Iqbal and Mohsin Naqvi sat on the high-level panel, while Rana Sanaullah and federal minister Musadiq Malik also helped shape the model a lineup that suggests this isn't a bureaucratic exercise buried in a ministry, but a plan with direct backing from the government's senior political circle.

Whether Islamabad's residents actually get a mayor, an assembly and provincial-style autonomy now depends on how fast the PM's office moves this draft from proposal to legislation and whether CDA's dramatic loss of authority survives the inevitable pushback from within the system it currently controls.