KOHAT: Social and political circles of Gumbat tehsil have written a letter to the secretary Election Commission of Pakistan complaining about the merger of the Darra Adamkhel tribal subdivision into the provincial assembly constituency of PK-90, Kohat.

They argued that both the areas had different cultures, customs and languages, so the merger was unnatural.

They also raised the issue that geographically diverse Darra Adamkhel was situated at a distance of 20 kilometres from KP-90, which would prove a bane for the contestants.

They repented that the tribesmen of Darra, a former frontier region (FR), had already lost one National Assembly seat shared with other five formerly FRs, and its people must have been given a separate provincial assembly seat to elect their own lawmaker from amongst them, who could understand their problems.

In the letter, chairman of Togh Payan welfare organisation Dr Mohammad Inaam Khan, Togh Bala village council chairman Shaukat Khan and former contestant for the provincial assembly seat Haji Shakoor pleaded that Darra should be made a separate provincial assembly constituency instead of merging it with KP-90.

In the complaint to the ECP secretary, they said Darra had a huge 118,576 voters, but they had been merged with Gumbat, which was injustice with them.

They said the EC had made the changes without taking into account the ground realities.

Meanwhile, former Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf district president Altaf Alam told Dawn on Monday said that the merger of Darra Adamkhel with KP-90 would be a bitter pill to swallow.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2023