PESHAWAR: The merger of tribal regions with northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has been endorsed by the high-powered National Implementation Committee (NIC) on Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Reforms, which has also agreed that Islamabad would make a policy statement in this regard, reported a leading English daily.
The NIC met last week and was chaired by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.
During the meeting, it was also decided and agreed to let FATA elect 23 members to the KP Assembly in the general elections scheduled to be held in July 2018.
The meeting was also attended by Chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions retired Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch, KP Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, Cabinet Committee on FATA Reforms Chairman Sartaj Aziz and the federal law secretary, who deputised for special assistant to the prime minister on law, Barrister Zafarullah Khan.
The meeting also decided to do away with the controversial sections of the Frontier Crimes Regulations and allow the colonial-era regulation to continue as a supplementary dispute and conflict resolution mechanism with a sunset clause to repeal it in its entirety once a proper judicial system was in place in the tribal region.
The decisions taken in the meeting weren’t publicised, however, three days later, on Dec 21, Prime Minister Abbasi, in an apparent follow-up to the meeting, met former prime minister Nawaz Sharif at his Jati Umra residence in Lahore.
PM Abbasi and Gen Bajwa had met the JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman in the prime minister’s chambers at the Parliament House to discuss FATA reforms and attempt to persuade him to drop his opposition to the proposed merger plan.
