Sindh Govt to run NICVD affairs without ownership
KARACHI (Reporter): Sindh government would continue to run administrative and financial affairs of National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) without claiming its ownership. The ownership of the institute will remain with the Federal Government.
Sindh Assembly has passed the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (Sindh Administration) Act 2014 (Revival) Bill, 2026 on Friday, providing legal cover to all administrative steps of the Sindh government taken between January 17, 2019 and August 08, 2023. Provincial Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs, Ziaul Hassan Lanjar presented the bill.
Between 2019 and 2023, the NICVD continued to function under de facto provincial management, with Sindh providing funding, staffing, and operational oversight, while the legal dispute between the federal and provincial governments remained unresolved.
The long-running dispute over the administrative control of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) has seen multiple legal, administrative and political developments since 2019, culminating in a formal federal–provincial agreement in August 2023.
The Sindh Assembly had enacted the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (Sindh Administration) Act, 2014 to place NICVD under provincial control. However, on January 19, 2019, the Supreme Court of Pakistan suspended the Act, holding that NICVD, along with Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) and the National Institute of Child Health (NICH), were federal institutions and could not be unilaterally taken over by the province.
Following the suspension of the Act, the Supreme Court ordered that administrative control of NICVD be restored to the federal government. Despite this ruling, the Sindh government continued to manage and operate the institute in practice, citing continuity of patient care and existing administrative arrangements.
During this period, the Sindh government filed a review petition against the Supreme Court’s decision, which remained pending for several years. Simultaneously, Sindh adopted administrative measures to safeguard its healthcare network by legislating separately for provincial cardiac facilities, including the establishment and expansion of satellite cardiac centres and chest pain units across the province.
The matter was finally addressed through an intergovernmental settlement on August 8, 2023, when the federal government and the Government of Sindh signed a formal agreement concerning NICVD, JPMC and NICH. Under the agreement, the management, operational control and financial responsibility of NICVD were handed over to the Sindh government for a 25-year period.
According to the terms of the agreement, ownership of the institutions and land remains with the federal government, while Sindh is authorized to run the hospitals, manage staff, oversee services and bear all operational costs. The agreement effectively regularized the arrangement that had existed on the ground since 2019 and brought an end to prolonged institutional uncertainty.
