Rs1,200b K-P dues pending with Centre

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Caretaker Chief Minister Muhammad Azam Khan has said that, under net hydel profit as per the AGN Qazi formula, Rs1,200 billion in dues are pending against the federal government.

The chief minister said that, at the time of the ex-FATA merger, the federating entities had committed to provide three percent of their NFC shares to the Newly Merged Districts (NMDs).

It had also been pledged, he said, that Rs100 billion would be provided to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa every year for the accelerated development of the NMDs but, during the last five years, only Rs 103 billion had been provided to the province out of the total Rs500 billion.

He was addressing the ninth meeting of the caretaker cabinet which was held here on Wednesday.

Besides caretaker cabinet members, the meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry and concerned administrative secretaries.

In his address to the participants of the meeting, the chief minister welcomed the new cabinet members.

Touching upon the role and mandate of the caretaker government as prescribed in the Constitution and the Election Commission Act 2017, the chief minister said that the role, responsibilities, and dos and don’ts of the caretaker set-up were very clear in the relevant provisions of the Constitution and the ECP Act, adding that, as a purely apolitical and impartial set-up, the caretaker government will restrict itself to its constitutional and legal role and perform its duties without any political affiliation.

Azam Khan remarked that the caretaker government is faced with two major challenges, the law and order situation and a financial crunch, and that improving the prevalent law and order situation would be the top priority of his government which would make all-out efforts to that end.

“The province is largely dependent on the federal government for its revenue, of which more than ninety per cent comes from various federal receipts,” Azam Khan maintained, adding that, with the merger of ex-FATA, the population of the province had increased which meant that the NFC shares of the province should also rise to 19 percent of the total instead of the 14.6 per cent that it continued to receive.

Azam Khan informed the new cabinet members that he had already taken up all such issues with the previous federal government for redress and directed the caretaker finance minister to follow up on those cases with the caretaker federal government.

The agenda for the meeting encompassed seven key points, notably the approval of project revisions, the establishment of a forensic science laboratory in Peshawar, the nomination of an administrative judge for anti-terrorism courts, and fixing matters related to the Police Public School teachers’ case in court.

The meeting’s deliberations also included the approval of supplementary funding for the Forensic Science Laboratory in Peshawar and revisions to the PC1 for the Janikhel Bannu Police Station.

These measures are anticipated to contribute significantly to counterterrorism efforts and the maintenance of law and order.

Furthermore, the cabinet approved the nomination of Senior Judge Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim Khan as an administrative judge for anti-terrorism courts, a recommendation of the Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court.