Fata merger into KP: SC adjourns pleas challenging 25th Amendment for two weeks

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned for two weeks hearing of pleas challenging the 25th constitutional amendment through which the tribal areas were merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.

A five-member constitutional bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Aminuddin Khan, heard the petitions, challenging the 25th constitutional amendment. Additional Attorney General Chaudhry Aamir Rehman told the court that they want to submit reply in the instant matter.

Waseem Sajjad, counsel for the petitioners, submitted before the court that the case was fixed after a long time, hence the court should give a date for hearing the matter. At this, Justice Aminuddin Khan told the counsel for the petitioners that cases were now being fixed regularly for hearing.

Meanwhile, the court adjourned the matter for two weeks. The 25th constitutional Amendment was passed by the Parliament in May 2018 through which the tribal areas were merged into Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The Maliks and elders of former tribal areas, however, had challenged it in the Supreme Court, contending that the FATA had lost its identity as well as 12 seats in the National Assembly and eight seats in the Senate.

They had further submitted that the amendment deviated from the objective resolution of the Constitution which could not be permitted. They had further contended that the amendment was passed by violating the basic structure of the Constitution and was therefore illegal.

“Through the amendment the distinct character of FATA as a unit of the Federation had been destroyed,” the petitioners had submitted.

The federal and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwagovernments, however, had raised objections on the maintainability of the petition, contending that the petition was filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution, adding that firstly it could only be invoked when there was any question of fundamental rights and secondly if any matter relating to public importance was affected at large.

Both the federal and provincial governments had contended that nothing of that sort had been mentioned in the petition but it was an issue related only to the petitioners. Later, on March 9, 2022, a three-member Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice Umar Ata Bandial, had decided to constitute a larger bench for hearing a petition challenging the 25th Constitutional Amendment.