LAHORE: The Punjab government has introduced a bill aimed at drafting master plans for every district in the province in an effort to curb the unregulated expansion of housing societies across Pakistan's most populous province.
But critics, including some lawmakers and urban planning experts, warn that the proposed legislation would centralise power, stripping elected local governments of a key constitutional function and handing it to unelected bureaucrats.
On March 7, the Punjab government tabled the Punjab Spatial Planning Authority Bill 2025 in the provincial assembly. The legislation suggests the creation of a central Punjab Spatial Planning Authority tasked with approving and reviewing land use and urban planning policies for all 41 districts in the province.
The 18-member authority would be chaired by Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, with the Minister for Local Government Zeeshan Rafique serving as its vice chairperson. The Authority would also include ten bureaucrats – such as secretaries of housing, local government, law, and agriculture – along with five experts and a director general, all appointed by the chief minister herself.
The law does not specify who these five experts would be.
At the district level, the bill proposes the creation of District Spatial Planning Agencies, each to be led by the deputy commissioner (DC), the top administrative officer in a district. These agencies would recommend land-use plans for their respective districts and ensure that the approved plans are implemented.
The legislation also outlines broad planning principles that must be followed when drafting master plans, such as promoting sustainable development, renewable energy, conservation of natural resources, and equitable access to services, while preserving rich agricultural land and reducing car dependency.
After its introduction, the bill was sent to the Punjab Assembly's standing committee on local government for a review. The bill is expected to be passed in the coming week, given that the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) holds a majority in the provincial assembly.
During standing committee deliberations last month, the government argued for the need of a legal framework to stop the rapid and illegal conversion of agricultural land into urban sprawl.
A presentation shared with lawmakers on March 13 revealed that more than 225,000 acres of farmland had already been consumed by 6,000 private housing schemes across the province.
Officials cited this unchecked expansion as a major contributor to worsening smog in Punjab, where the capital city of Lahore consistently ranks among the most polluted in the world.
The new law, officials said, would help restore order by clearly designating zones for residential, commercial, educational, and recreational uses in each district. It would also establish a Central Business District (CBD) in each area.
But during the debate in the committee, the bill faced criticism - even from members of the ruling party.
Ahmed Iqbal Chaudhry, a member of the provincial assembly from the PML-N, who is also the son of Ahsan Iqbal, the federal minister for planning and development, argued that the bill represented a top-down approach to planning, which was at odds with global best practices.
“Land-use planning should remain with local governments,” he told the committee. “When local governments are absent, we quietly take away their functions."
Chaudhry also pointed out that the PML-N, in its 2024 election manifesto, had pledged to empower local governments by strengthening their administrative and financial authority.
Under Punjab's Local Government Act 2019, drawing up land use plans is a function of the elected local bodies. But Punjab has had no elected local government since December 31, 2021, when the last term expired. Despite a constitutional requirement for devolved governance, elections have not yet been held.
The provincial government is reportedly in the process of drafting a new local government law to replace the 2019 one.
Zeeshan Rafique, Punjab's minister for local government and community development and the proposed vice chair of the Authority, defended the bill as a crucial step toward coordinated urban development.
“Let's be realistic. Something like this has never happened before,” Rafique told The News, “Previously, housing societies were being built on green areas simply because there were no master plans. Only Lahore had one.”
He explained that in many districts, multiple entities were in the habit of developing their own overlapping land-use plans — development authorities on one hand and local governments on the other — creating confusion and inefficiency.
So far, the Project Management Unit (PMU) under Rafique's ministry has developed and notified land-use plans for around 12 out of 41 districts for the next 20 years, as per the PMU's website.
However, Rafique acknowledged that the master plan for the Lahore division — which includes the districts of Lahore, Kasur, Nankana Sahib and Sheikhupura — could not be finalised, as the previous master plan is currently under litigation.
It remains unclear why these 12 plans were finalised before the Punjab Spatial Planning Authority Bill 2025 was made law. The minister did not respond to this specific question at the time of filing.
Furthermore, Rafique dismissed the need for public consultations before drafting the 12 land-use plans, arguing that engagement with relevant stakeholders — such as land developers, legal entities, and local bureaucratic administrators — was sufficient.
He also insisted that the Punjab government could not wait for local bodies to be restored in order to finalise the master plans.
"If local government elections are delayed by three or four months, let's say, what should we do? Should we just wait?" said Rafique.
He even defended the proposal to appoint a Deputy Commissioner (DC) — an office with colonial roots — as head of the District Spatial Planning Agencies, claiming that local government heads would be included in these agencies.
As for whether powerful housing schemes like the military-run Defence Housing Authority (DHA) would comply with the new plans, Rafique said, "DHA's own act requires them to follow official master plans. Once those plans are finalised, they'll have to comply."
There are at least five DHAs in Punjab, namely in Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi-Islamabad, Gujranwala, and Bahawalpur.
Urban planning professionals have voiced concerns about the bill's centralised structure and lack of democratic oversight.
"Planning is a local government function across the world," said Dr Nasir Javed, an urban development specialist. "The planning needs of Murree are completely different from those of Cholistan. You can't take a one-size-fits-all approach."
He argued that the Authority should consist primarily of subject-matter experts, therefore urban planners, architects, economists, environmentalists, etc and not bureaucrats.
"This law is overly bureaucratic, if not autocratic," he said. "You can't govern a province of over 127 million people from an office in Lahore."
Javed also criticised the decision to place DCs as the head of local planning agencies. "These agencies should be headed by mayors, not bureaucrats," he said. "For God's sake. The rest of the world has moved on. But we're still putting everything under the control of the DC."
Environmental lawyer and activist Ahmed Rafay Alam echoed the same concerns, adding that the constitution calls for building the capacity of local governments.
"Look at this Authority, it is a dozen bureaucrats with only five experts," he said. "It's wishful thinking to believe that secretaries will solve all [our urban planning] problems. Are bureaucrats superhuman?"
Alam also pointed out that the bill lacks any requirement for public input or environmental assessments before finalising master plans.
Still, he acknowledged that the bill had some promising elements. The law's emphasis on equity and sustainable development, amongst other things. He added that such planning could potentially rein in powerful development authorities like the army-run DHA.
"And that too at the district level," Alam said with a laugh, "You can see how ambitious [this bill] really is."