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Senate passes Fata Reforms Bill!

ISLAMABAD: The Senate here today has passed the Federally Administered Tribal Areas Reforms Bill with 71-5 votes facilitating the merger of Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

While eulogizing the efforts of senator Farhatullah Babar for his efforts in this regard, Asif Ali Zardari said that that the entire parliament deserved appreciation for the historic move.  Leader of the Opposition Sherry Rehman, who took to the twitter, called it a historic day:

Maintaining that as  ZAB’s dream Senator Sherry Rehman pointed out that he was the one who had first formed a committee on the issue in the 1970s. His daughter too went to the court on the issue.

PTI Vice Chairman, Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Friday that with the merger of Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a 150 years old system had buried. Talking to the media here, he said that merger of FATA, was the success of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf as it was part of the party’s manifesto. He informed that people of FATA would have their own representation 

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Relevant piece published earlier: Pakistan’s National Assembly has passed the constitutional amendment facilitating the merger of Fata and KP with 229 Ayes and one Nay. While the only dissenting vote came from PTI’s Dawar Kundi, JUI-F and PkMAP members walked out from the assembly before the voting.   President has summoned a session of the Senate to review the bill that seeks an amendment to Article 1 of the Constitution, which defines the country’s territory and mentions Fata as a separate entity along with other four provinces. It also amends Articles 51 and 59, which specify the number of seats allocated to each of the federating units in the national and provincial assemblies. Since Fata will not have representation the strength of the Senate will reduce from 104 to 96 members. Similarly, the number of seats in the National Assembly will decrease to 336 from 342. KP assembly will have 145 seats. Terming it a historic bill, the prime minister has thanked the opposition benches for voting in favor of it. He further pointed out that it took four years to reach that point with only eight days remaining in the NA’s tenure. MQM, maintaining that it still believed that Fata should become a new province, supported the bill for the sake of political unity. MQM’s Farooq Sattar while speaking on the occasion said that the Fata-KP merger would render creation of other provinces difficult in the future. MQM and PkMAP held that there should be a referendum in Fata providing a chance to the locals decide their fate.   PkMAP stated that people of Fata wanted their own province, chief minister, governor and PSC. JUI-F, terming the day as black alleged some foreign hands were pulling the strings. PTI, calling it a historical day, held that the merger would be the completion of Pakistan.

M M Alam

M. M. Alam is a Pakistan-based working journalist since 1981. Karachi University faculty gold medalist Alam began his career four decades ago by writing for Dawn, Pakistan’s highest circulating English daily. He has worked for region’s leading publications, global aviation periodicals including Rotors (of USA) and vetted New York Times as permanent employee of daily Express Tribune. Alam regularly covers international aviation and defense-related events including Salon Du Bourget (France), Farnborough (United Kingdom), Dubai (UAE). Alam has reported thousands of events and interviewed hundreds of people in Pakistan, UAE, EU, UK and USA. Being Francophone Alam also coordinates with a number of French publications.