The correct answer is B: Punjab. Before 1901, the areas that would later be constituted into the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), were administered as part of the Punjab Province. During the British Raj, the frontier regions bordering Afghanistan were strategically important and underwent several administrative reorganizations. Initially, these districts were a part of the larger Punjab administration.
A: Sindh is incorrect. Sindh was a distinct province under British rule, geographically located to the south of Punjab and the NWFP. It had its own separate administration and was not contiguous with or directly governing the tribal and settled areas that would form the NWFP.
C: Balochistan is incorrect. Balochistan was largely composed of princely states and tribal territories, and parts of it were administered as a Chief Commissioner's Province. It is geographically located to the southwest of the NWFP, and its administrative structure was separate from that of the areas that became the NWFP.
D: Kashmir is incorrect. Kashmir was a large princely state ruled by a Maharaja, under British paramountcy but not directly part of British Indian administration as a province. It shares a border with the region that became NWFP, but the NWFP areas were not part of the Kashmir state's administration.
In 1901, Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India, recognized the strategic and administrative challenges of managing the frontier from Lahore (Punjab's capital) and thus created the North-West Frontier Province as a separate entity, directly under the control of the Viceroy through a Chief Commissioner, effectively separating it from Punjab.