A local bench of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Tuesday dismissed a petition filed against the bifurcation of Kohistan and upheld a notification of the division issued by the provincial government.
In February, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government issued a notification to create the seventh administrative unit in Hazara Division by splitting Kohistan into Lower and Upper Kohistan. As per the notification, Lower Kohistan would comprise 26 union councils (UC) and have two tehsils, Palas and Pattan, with the latter being the district headquarters.
However, the tribes from Palas opposed this decision and challenged the notification in the Abbottabad bench of PHC.
The Palas Kolai Action Committee through its petition contended that Palas has 16 UCs and 500 villages with a population of over 175,000, while Pattan has 94 villages and 10 UCs and its population was 100,000 thus Palas qualifies to be declared as district headquarters.
On Tuesday, the bench rejected the committee’s plea and upheld the provincial government’s decision of making Pattan the headquarters.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 25th, 2014.
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