Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said the transformation witnessed in Thar has yet to be replicated across much of the country, arguing that Islamabad could learn from the region’s development if the federal capital has failed to deliver comparable results.
Speaking at the inauguration of Phase III of the Thar Coal project, Mr. Bhutto said critics in Islamabad had once dismissed Thar’s coal as commercially unviable and warned against investing in the region. Thar Block II, he noted, initially produced about 600 megawatts of electricity but now generates roughly 2,000 megawatts.
He said Thar had made progress across multiple sectors, including education, healthcare and energy, and had become a source of surprise for the rest of Pakistan. Children from the region, he added, were now topping examinations, which he described as an achievement that should be celebrated nationally.
Mr. Bhutto also criticized what he called politics of hatred in Karachi, saying political opponents had focused on division rather than recognizing Thar’s achievements. He accused unnamed political groups of attempting to introduce sectarian or ideological politics into Sindh, saying such efforts would not succeed.
Tharparkar, he said, represented one of the strongest examples of how Pakistan’s constitutional and political system—including the 18th Amendment—could support development at the provincial level.
Mr. Bhutto said Thar’s coal resources were also helping Pakistan conserve about $1.6 billion in foreign exchange. With global fertilizer markets facing supply pressures, he called for faster completion of projects that could use Thar coal to support domestic production.
He rejected the argument that the failure of existing institutions should automatically lead to the creation of new provinces. Instead, he offered a pointed political comparison: if Islamabad had failed to deliver, he said, the federal capital should be placed under Thar’s management.
“Give us responsibility for Islamabad,” he said in effect, arguing that Thar’s experience could be applied to improve schools, hospitals and public administration in the capital. The challenge, he suggested, was not a lack of resources but whether Pakistan’s institutions could translate those resources into tangible results for citizens.
