ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – A majority of the Basra Provincial Council members have declared their support for moving forward with steps to form the Basra Region, the council’s deputy chairman said on Friday.

“The number of provincial council members supporting the move to proceed with the steps to form the Basra Region has reached 17 members,” Deputy Council Chairman Osama Abdul-Ridha al-Saad told The New Region.

The Basra Provincial Council has 23 seats.

Saad said the position reflects a need to address the “imbalances in the management” of the province, “particularly regarding service files, financial resources, and administrative powers.”

He added that regionalization is a right “guaranteed to the provinces by the constitution.”

The next steps include contacting the Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani and other relevant federal authorities, before forwarding the request to the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), according to the deputy chairman.

Jaafar Al-Hajjaj, a member of Basra Provincial Council from the Tasmim Bloc, told The New Region on Thursday that the next step in the regionalization process is to “begin the referendum process as a legitimate right and an irreplaceable legal pathway.”

Hajjaj also noted that the efforts are not to separate from the central Iraqi state but are instead “exercising a clear constitutional right” to transfer financial and administrative powers from the federal ministers to the province.

In addition, Imad al-Mutairi, another member of the council, asserted that the regionalization “would open new horizons for local development, investment, and improvement of basic services for citizens."

Iraq’s electoral commission announced last Thursday that it had launched an application form for the creation of the “Basra Region,” giving an organization its approval to collect two percent of the province’s voters to activate constitutional procedures.

Article 119 of the Iraqi constitution stipulates that one or more Iraqi provinces “shall have the right to organize into a region based on a request to be voted on in a referendum," after requesting the initiation of the procedure in one of two ways; either through a vote by ten percent of the population, or a request filed by one third of the provincial council, with the former requiring an initial petition by at least two percent of the province to carry out the process.

Sitting on a vast volume of natural oil and gas, Basra is one of Iraq's most strategic cities, generating substantial revenue for the country via its natural resources and ports.

The Kurdistan Region is currently the only autonomous region in federal Iraq. The Region's authorities, however, have repeatedly criticized Baghdad for not adhering to the constitution in their implementation of a federal model.