‘Federal govt has no right to reduce share of provinces in NFC Award’

The federal government does not have any right to reduce the quota of the fiscal share of the provinces under the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, said Adviser to the CM on Information and Law Barrister Murtaza Wahab on Thursday.

In a statement issued in response to Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry’s news conference earlier in the day, Wahab said that all the decisions pertaining to the NFC Award should be taken in accordance with the Constitution.

The adviser said that the federal government of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf had in fact tried to promote an autocratic act by making the announcement to reduce the quota of the provincial share in the NFC Award.

According to Wahab, there was “no justification in pushing back the smaller underdeveloped provinces to further destruction in the name of doing development in the formerly Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata)”.

He claimed Fata had been merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and brought under the Constitution owing to the struggle of Pakistan Peoples Party as it had always stood for the cause of Fata’s development and progress.

Wahab said that the decision regarding the NFC Award taken without consultations with the concerned provinces through a proper session could never be considered a democratic step. He added that the announcement of the formation of a task force at the Centre for Karachi is tantamount to interfering with the domain of the provincial government as the federal government should refrain from taking such steps.

The Constitution defines the domains of the concept of provincial autonomy well, he said, adding that the formula for devising the NFC Award was also part of the Constitution. Wahab warned that the federal government should refrain from such acts that violate the provisions of the Constitution as such steps would create serious repercussions.

He said that the present government in a democracy was in fact showing tendencies of doing politics based on autocracy as such a government should not make the mistake of considering that people in the country could be fooled. He added thousands of activists and supporters of the PPP as well its leaders had laid down their lives for the cause of continued democracy in the country.