The government has prepared a plan to give Islamabad a special administrative status, with the capital’s mayor proposed as the head of the new administrative structure. Under the proposal, the new administrative unit could have between 25 and 30 elected members, a far smaller body than the municipal corporation that has governed the city until now. The plan also includes expanding the capital’s geographical boundaries, bringing in areas from neighbouring Rawalpindi and Haripur, and from the Murree region.
If the proposal goes ahead, it would be the most significant change to how the federal capital is run in years. The details have come from government sources rather than from a formal announcement, so the final shape of the plan is not yet settled. But the direction is clear: a new status for the capital, a mayor in charge, and a larger territory to administer.
ISLAMABAD’S ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE COULD CHANGE
Under the proposal, Islamabad could either receive a special status or be developed as a model administrative unit. The mayor would serve as the administrative head of Islamabad under the proposed system, and the new unit would have somewhere between 25 and 30 elected members.
That is a striking change from the structure Islamabad has had for the past decade. The capital is currently governed by three bodies whose responsibilities have often overlapped: the Islamabad Capital Territory Administration, established in 1980 and led by a Chief Commissioner with powers similar to those of a provincial government; the Capital Development Authority, created in 1960 to build the new capital and still in charge of master planning; and the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad, set up under the local government law of 2015 as the elected municipal authority, headed by a mayor and made up of 151 members.
In practice, the elected corporation has been absent for years. There has been no elected Metropolitan Corporation since February 2021, when the previous mayor and members completed their term, and the federal government has repeatedly appointed the Deputy Commissioner as administrator instead. Earlier this year, the cabinet approved a different reorganisation: an ordinance replacing the single Metropolitan Corporation with three town corporations, each aligned with one of Islamabad’s three National Assembly constituencies, each with its own mayor and two deputy mayors chosen indirectly by union council chairpersons.
The new proposal, with a single mayor at the head and only 25 to 30 elected members, does not sit neatly alongside that three-town model, and it is not yet clear how the two would be reconciled. The special status plan may supersede or reshape the ordinance, or the numbers and the structure may still be under negotiation inside the government. What is clear is that the capital’s governance is being redesigned, and that elected representation, after years of administrators, is back at the centre of the discussion.
PARTS OF RAWALPINDI AND HARIPUR COULD BE INCLUDED
Sources said the government is considering including certain areas of Rawalpindi in the federal capital. The proposal also includes areas of Haripur district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and some areas falling within NA-51, the National Assembly constituency that covers Murree district, are also under consideration.
An expansion of this kind would be more than a change on a map. The areas around Islamabad have grown rapidly, and the boundary between the capital and its neighbours has blurred as housing, markets and traffic spill across it. Bringing parts of Rawalpindi and Haripur into the capital would put planning, roads, water and sanitation for those areas under one administration. It would also raise difficult questions, since Haripur lies in a different province, and any transfer of territory between a province and the federal capital would need agreement at the highest level and a legal basis that has not yet been explained. For residents of the areas concerned, the change would be felt in practical ways: which authority maintains their streets, and which elected representatives speak for them.
PLAN TO INCLUDE PORTS DROPPED
Government sources also said the authorities have abandoned an earlier proposal to bring Gwadar or other ports under Islamabad’s administrative structure. The latest plan therefore focuses on restructuring the federal capital itself and potentially expanding its territorial limits, rather than extending the capital’s reach to the coast.
What happens next will depend on whether the proposal moves from government sources to a formal decision. A change of this scale would need legal backing, most likely through legislation or an ordinance, and it would have to be fitted together with the three-town corporation framework approved earlier this year. Until that happens, the plan remains a proposal. But the government is discussing a special status, a mayor-led administration and a larger capital, which shows that Islamabad’s governance is firmly on the agenda, and that the city that has been administered without an elected local government for more than four years may finally be heading for a new structure of its own.
