PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak on Tuesday claimed that the prime minister and army chief had agreed on the merger of Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa before the next general elections.

“I am sharing good news with you (lawmakers) that the prime minister and army chief agreed on the merger of Fata with KP in a recent meeting,” he told the provincial assembly.

He referred to a recent meeting between Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa.

The CM said both the premier and army chief had assured him of the Fata-KP merger.

He held bureaucracy responsible for the delay in the merger of Fata with KP.

“There will be elections in Fata for the KP Assembly seats,” he said.

Mr Khattak said he was hopeful that the federal and provincial bureaucracy would not create hurdles to the merger as the army chief had agreed to the proposal.

CM hopes bureaucracy won’t create hurdles to merger plan

He said the representatives (lawmakers) of tribal areas would sit in the KP Assembly as members after the next general elections.

Deputy Speaker Prof Mehar Taj Roghani chaired the session.

Earlier, after creating a controversy, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly constituted a select committee for deliberation on the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Control of Narcotic Substances Bill, 2017.

The bill was placed on the agenda twice for passage in the ongoing session but it wasn’t passed as the police department complained that the proposed law was meant to snatch powers regarding dealing with narcotic substances from it.

Excise and narcotics control minister Mian Jamsheduddin requested the chair to relax the relevant rules to allow him to refer the bill to the select committee.

The chair formed the select committee headed by Mian Jamsheduddin and comprising herself, senior minister Inayatullah Khan, law minister Imtiaz Shahid, information minister Shah Farman and leader of the opposition Maulana Lutfur Rehman.

Other members of the committee are Dr Haider Ali of the PTI, Fakhar Azam Wazir of the PPP, Jaffar Shah of the ANP and Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli of the Qaumi Watan Party.

Under the proposed law, the provincial government wants to empower the excise, taxation and narcotics control department to seize narcotics substances and prosecute the cases in courts.

Currently, the Anti-Narcotics Force and police deal with the narcotics substances and their prosecution.

The excise department can neither register report nor prosecute the cases of narcotics and instead, it can only seize them and handover to the police or ANF.

Under the proposed law, which was referred to the select committee, the ANF’s jurisdiction will be restricted to airports and dry ports, while the police will be allowed to only seize the narcotics and hand them over to the excise department for registration of the case, investigation and prosecution.

The high-ups of the police department had expressed concerns about the proposed legislation and termed it a bid to snatch their powers on the matter.

Sources however claimed that the excise department agreed with the police a few days ago that Section 45(2) of the proposed law would be deleted for restoring the police’s powers.

Section 45 (2) states, “In case, any police officer arrests an accused with narcotics substances, such accused along with the recovered narcotics substances shall be handed over to the Narcotics Control Wing or investigation office, as the case may be, with immediate effect.”

The excise department will deal with the narcotics substances after the promulgation of the proposed law, while the police will continue functioning under the current relevant federal law, the Control of Narcotics Substances Act, 1997.

The house also passed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minerals Sector Governance Bill, 2017, and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2017.

Both the bills were tabled by senior minister Inayatullah Khan.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2017