PESHAWAR, Sept 29: Two civil society leaders the Kurrum Agency on Tuesday rejected the formation of nominated tribal councils by the federal government and urged Islamabad to extend its devolution plan to tribal areas.

Speaking at a joint news conference, Mussarat Hussain advocate and Anwar Ali, both from the Kurrum Agency, termed the nominated tribal council a humiliation of tribesmen who had been demanding replacement of the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulations with the legal system enforced in settled areas of the country.

The establishment of the Fata Secretariat was unwarranted as it had failed to deliver the goods, they added. In Jan 2002, a meeting presided over by President Pervez Musharraf had decided that elected tribal councils would be formed in every tribal agency but now political agents had nominated hand-picked elders on these councils, they added.

The same meeting, they said, had opposed the establishment of Fata Secretariat, but later the secretariat was established in Peshawar, which strengthened the role of political agents.

It had been decided, at the same meeting, that administrative powers of political agents would be curtailed and transferred to elected agency nazims but nothing had changed so for, they said.

They asked the government to change the present role of political agents from administrators to coordinators, hand over administrative powers being exercised by the political agents to elected tribal nazims, give right of appeal and a right of review appeal to the tribal people besides repealing some controversial provisions of the FCRs and announce a special development package for tribal areas.

They opposed the representation of the people on the clan and sub-clan basis from the same ethnic group in the council and feared that it might spark their dormant enmities. Any unwise move on the part of the government might turn into fiasco, they observed.