Ashrafuddin Pirzada
KHYBER: The Fata Qaumi Jirga (FQJ) on Saturday announced the formation of a 48-member committee to bolster their campaign against the 2018 Fata-Khyber Pakhtunkhwa merger in all seven tribal districts and six former Frontier Regions.
The development came during a Fata Qaumi Jirga meeting held in the Jamrud area, where Malik Bismillah Khan was in the chair.
Elders from tribal districts and Frontier Regions showed up in large numbers.
Bismillah Khan Afridi said that people in tribal districts knew of the failure of the move to merge Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018 and that they’re upset by the federal government’s failure to fulfil commitments regarding the tribal region’s development.
He insisted that while the federal government failed to execute major development projects in any of the tribal districts through the timely provision of promised funds, the region had plunged into complete administrative chaos amid worsening law and order.
“People of the tribal region have realized that the merger plan was ill-conceived, while most stakeholders weren’t taken into confidence by authorities at the time of the passage of the 25th Constitutional Amendment, leaving the region with a plethora of legal, security and political issues,” he said.
The FQJ leader said that the newly-formed committee consisting of three representatives from every tribal district would make frequent contacts with all stakeholders in the region and provide impetus to the anti-merger campaign among disheartened tribesmen.
He said that the FQJ was the main motivating force behind keeping the anti-merger campaign alive on both political and legal fronts as they had also challenged the 25th Constitutional Amendment in the Supreme Court.
