PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court Bar Association on Thursday called upon the federal government to fully implement a judgment delivered by a larger bench of the high court regarding the jurisdiction of superior courts in tribal areas and making the fundamental rights available to the inhabitants of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

A general body meeting of the PHCBA also expressed reservations over a recently formed committee by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan for suggesting reforms in Fata and asked the governor to include senior advocates of the high court in the said committee.

The meeting, chaired by PHCBA president Mohammad Essa Khan, was convened on the requisition filed by the Fata Lawyers Forum. The meeting was addressed by the president of Fata Lawyers Forum, Ijaz Mohmand, Essa Khan, PHCBA general secretary Ayaz Khan, Abdul Lateef Afridi, Ghulam Nabi Khan, Saeed Akhundzada, Moazzam Butt, Wali Khan Afridi, Mohim Afridi and others.

The speakers regretted that despite the passage of around 67 years since the creation of Pakistan the tribesmen of Fata had still been deprived of their fundamental rights. They said that during the previous government certain reforms were introduced in Fata in 2011 but those had still not been fully implemented.

They said the said reforms were mere eyewash aimed at receiving funds from donor agencies. They added that now once again another committee had been formed by the governor for proposing reforms, but the said committee lack proper representation of tribal people and its members were mostly ill informed about Fata.

The speakers stated that under Article 247 of the constitution only the Parliament was empowered to extend the jurisdiction of superior courts to Fata, therefore, the parliamentarians from Fata should move resolutions in the Senate and National Assembly for extending the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and high court to tribal areas.

They regretted that the successive rulers had been treating Fata like a testing laboratory and so far around 40,000 tribal people got killed in the ongoing conflict.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2014