Muttahida Qabail Party demands timely elections in tribal areas

ISLAMABAD: The Muttahida Qabail Party leaders held a march on Friday to demand timely elections in 2018 instead of 2019 on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly seats from the tribal areas, previously known as FATA and administered by the federal government.

The participants marched from D-Chowk to NADRA Chowk in the federal capital, demanding elections from the tribal areas be held as part of the General Election 2018.

As the tribal areas have been merged with KP, the region would no more fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

The tribal areas were merged into the province on May 24 after the National Assembly passed the bill titled Thirty-First Amendment Act, 2018.

The merger promises reforms in the tribal areas, which have been on the back burner since quite a long time.

Since FATA would not fall under the jurisdictions of courts, tribespeople from across its agencies would be tried under the Frontier Crimes Regulation, also known as the Black Law, given to the region by the British government in 1901.

The main purpose of FCR was to protest the interests of the British rulers and counter the opposition of Pashtuns to their rule, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa what was then North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan and their adjoining tribal areas.