Background To The Separation Of East Pakistan

Pakistan faced a large number of problems from the day of its creation. One of these problems was that Pakistan consisted of East Pakistan and West Pakistan without any land communication between them. Secondly, West Pakistan was made of four provinces while East Pakistan had only one province.

But this province was greater in population than the other four provinces collectively. The languages spoken in the two provinces were also different. Their view points about matters of life were also different. When General Yahya Khan imposed martial law in the country, he announced that general elections will be held in the country and the majority party will be free to make the government.

The first general elections of the country were held on December 7, 1970. As a result of these elections, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman’s Awami League party in West Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) got the highest number of 88 seats out of 144.