PESHAWAR: The parliamentarians, civil society, lawyers and tribal people on Friday have highly lauded the passing of the historic FATA Bill 2017 from the National Assembly, allowing the supreme court (SC) and Peshawar High Court (PHC)’s jurisdiction to FATA.
They termed the passing of the bill a landmark achievement of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government towards the provision of speedy and inexpensive justice to the litigants and a major step towards the KP-FATA merger.
Bajaur Agency MNA Shahabud Din Khan said that it was a historic day in the history of FATA and their dreams of speedy justice finally have come true.
He said that the FATA Bill is a step forward to bring FATA into the country’s mainstream.
“The SC and PHC’s jurisdiction to FATA was a long-standing demand of the tribal people that was finally fulfilled today by the PML-N government for which it deserves full credit and appreciation and we also thank the opposition parties for their support,” he added.
“No political party had ever even considered extending the SC and PHC’s jurisdiction to FATA during the last 70 years despite many problems faced by the tribal people,” said Shahabud.
PML-N is the only party that had constituted a high-level committee led by the former PM’s advisor on foreign affairs Sirtaj Aziz that visited all tribal agencies and frontier regions to make the FATA bill and reforms acceptable to all.
Khan said that the bill has paved way to abolish the century-old draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR).
Senior lawyer and constitutional expert, Alamzain Khan advocate also hailed the extension of SC and PHC’s jurisdiction to FATA and appreciated the parliamentarians and the tribal people over the passing of the bill.
He said that PML-N has won the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of tribal people with the adaptation of this bill. He also said that FCR was the core cause of backwardness, illiteracy, economic imbalances and poverty in the tribal areas and the replacement of this draconian law with the SC and PHC would immensely help remove the sense of deprivation among the tribesmen besides the expedite pace of development.
The extension of the SC and PHC to FATA would immensely help in the provision of speedy justice to the litigants and give them the right to appeal, he added.
Many tribal elders hailed the passing of the bill and termed it a milestone achievement of the parliament.
