PESHAWAR, Nov 21: The ministry of state and frontier regions (Safron) has directed the NWFP Governor’s Fata Secretariat to restore the old policy of selecting students from the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas against seats reserved for them in medical and dental colleges of the country, sources said.

They said that the federal ministry, which directly deals with the affairs of Fata, has sent a letter to the secretariat, directing it to follow the old policy and distribute seats be made according to the old criteria.

The letter (F.3(10)EFC/2005) dated Nov 17 stated that the selection committee should go into a meeting again immediately and finalize the list in accordance with the previous policy adopted for the selection of Fata students against reserved seats in the medical and dental colleges.

The government had allocated 85 seats with 13 each for the seven tribal agencies.

The Governor’s Fata Secretariat had introduced the new selection policy according to which selection of students for medical colleges had been made on the basis of the 1998 census.

The sources said that some vested interests in the secretariat, while bypassing the authorities concerned, approved the new admission policy from the former governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah to make allocation of seats according to the population ratio of each tribal agency.