This is effectively the same problem as we saw in the discussion of Montenegrin Wikipedia—although since all but two of us are from Europe, North America or Israel, we feel more confident making calls in a case like Montenegrin than we do here. (And, candidly, there is less chance in the Montenegrin case of being accused of racism/Euro-centrism, even if that accusation would be totally without merit in this case.)

But as I said back then, the rule as currently written is fine when the language area starts with a clean slate. If there were no Western Punjabi Wikipedia now, we could reasonably try to get a single project to try to accommodate both Western Punjabi and Saraiki. (Whether that effort would be successful is a different question, but we could try.) However, I take Satdeep's comment below to indicate that there would be serious problems trying to integrate a new Saraiki-language community into a ten-year old Western Punjabi-language community, and that he recommends against it, based on the current "facts on the ground". Besides, to some extent the time to say "no" has passed, since Satdeep marked the project as "eligible" in 2017. So I think we need to move forward with this.

Steven

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