PHOTO: APP
ISLAMABAD: Lawmakers from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) have submitted a draft constitutional amendment bill in the National Assembly Secretariat, seeking merger of Fata in the Provincially Administrated Tribal Areas (Pata) of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The proposed 22nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 2015 was submitted by Fata parliamentary leader MNA Shah Jee Gul Afridi to National Assembly Secretary Muhammad Khan.
“We have submitted the draft bill with a hope to get a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly when the bill to obtain constitutional authority goes up for voting,” Sajid Hussain Turi, a Fata parliamentarian, told The Express Tribune.
The draft bill will be presented in a session of the National Assembly which will convene in October this year, he added.
Turi said that before drafting the bill Fata lawmakers had conferred with most mainstream political parties like Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Pakistan Peoples Party and Jamaat-e-Islami, etc. “All these parties assured us of their support for the passage of the bill by the lower house of parliament.”
The Fata lawmaker said if they failed to muster the mandatory two-thirds majority for approval of the bill, they would demand a separate province or the formulation of an executive committee. “We are fighting for the rights of the Fata people who are being treated as strangers or aliens in this country and are deprived of all rights that other citizens of the country enjoy,” he added.
According to Turi, Fata’s merger in Pata will help bring peace in the region and Fata tribesmen would also come under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. “At present, Fata is being considered as a hub of terrorists and wherever in the country any terrorist activity takes place it is associated with the region.”
Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2015.
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