Siraj sets Eid as deadline for Fata’s merger into KP

PESHAWAR: Jamaat-e-Islami on Tuesday set Eidul Azha as the deadline for the merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and announced a protest march headed for Islamabad in September if its demand wasn’t accepted.

On Tuesday, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) staged a sit-in outside the Governor’s House in Peshawar to press the federal government and the Governor who is its representative in the province to abolish the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) and merge Fata with KP. 

The participants at the protest sit-in were carrying banners and placards inscribed with slogans demanding the merger of Fata with KP.

They chanted slogans asking the government to abolish FCR and mainstream Fata. 

A number of JI leaders, representative of other political parties, civil society activists and others attended the sit-in to support the demand for early merger of Fata with KP. 

“The people of the tribal areas are not going to accept slavery anymore. They are neither dead nor Fata is a grave. They must be given their due rights by abolishing the black law of FCR and mainstreaming Fata by merging it with KP,” the central amir of the JI Sirajul Haq told the protest rally.

He warned the government to announce the merger of Fata with KP before Eidul Azha or else his party would launch a protest march aimed at reaching Islamabad next month.

“If the people from Fata and KP marched on Islamabad, then nobody would be able to stop them. We supported the federal government when it started working on the Fata reforms. Now the government instead of stepping back from the reforms must immediately announce merger of the tribal areas with KP,” Sirajul Haq declared.

He said that the KP governor should have participated in the sit-in as he was a government representative for the tribal people.

He maintained that the people of the tribal areas could no more tolerate the black law of FCR and said it needed to be abolished immediately. He claimed that all the political parties in Pakistan were against the FCR.

Sirajul Haq questioned as to why instead of showing the real population of Fata it had reportedly gone down in the census. He asked for showing the real population in Fata in the census so that the tribal people could be given their rights.

“I wonder as to how the population of Fata is decreasing when every tribesman has 15 kids,” he said in a lighter vein. He asked for re-conducting census to have the correct figures of people in all the tribal agencies. 

While talking about the rights of the tribal people, the JI amir said that nobody honoured promises made with the tribal people. He lamented that many areas were still without electricity and there was shortage of education and health facilities in Fata.

About the political scene in the country, he said that Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution of Pakistan must be applied to every individual in the country.

He said that dialogue must be held among the stakeholders for ensuring supremacy of the law and ending corruption from the country.