Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) Emir Sirajul Haq on Tuesday warned the government to ensure the merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) before December 31.

The JI chief, while addressing a long march to Islamabad protesting the delay in the KP-Fata merger, said there would be a much larger sit-in if their demand was not met by the deadline.

Siraj said the government is being "extremely insensitive" about the problems faced by residents of Fata, and had left them helpless at the hands of local political agents. "The political agent in tribal areas is more powerful than Mughal kings," he said.

"If the laws in Fata are so good, they should be imposed across the country. Otherwise the laws of Pakistan should apply to Fata as well," he said.

He said that the people of Pakistan were unaware of the difficulties of Fata's residents and demanded an end to injustices against them.

Earlier, the long march led by the JI protesting the government's slow progress on a proposed merger between KP and Fata reached Islamabad Tuesday morning.

The march, which was joined by thousands of JI supporters and Fata residents, set out from Peshawar's Bab-i-Khyber on Dec 11 seeking to exert pressure on the federal government to revoke the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) and merge the tribal areas with KP before the next General Election.

These steps are part of the Fata reforms which have been discussed for years, but were formally enshrined in the National Action Plan in December 2014 after the Army Public School attack.

While addressing the protesters today, JI KP Emir Mushtaq Ahmed Khan said that while people around the world were demanding secession of various states, the people of Fata were demanding a permanent inclusion in Pakistan.

He claimed that the 2017 census had under-counted the population in Fata and accused the government of promoting extremism in the area by preventing its merger with KP.

Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Khursheed Shah told the sit-in that despite the political consensus against the FCR, the government was not making any efforts to revoke the draconian law. He said that the PPP fully supports the demand for Fata's merger with KP.

"We will ensure the merger happens before 2018," Shah said, adding that this was the last chance for the government to move for the merger. "The government is scared of the merger," he claimed.

Fata reforms and the draconian FCR

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had, in 2014, termed the Fata reforms an integral part of NAP and said that they aimed at bringing tribal regions, that have been neglected for a long time, into the mainstream.

The tribal region of Fata is still ruled under the British-made Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) of 1901, which violates the fundamental rights of the residents.

The law states that three basic rights are not applicable to Fata residents: appeal, wakeel and daleel.

Also read: The Fata merger — towards a brave new world

Under the FCR, jirgas in Fata accord punishments in civil and criminal cases on the basis of their own traditions and beliefs while the state assumes a limited role. With the political agent as the judicial authority, criminal and civil cases are decided by him.

Minister of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) Abdul Qadir Baloch last week had said that the government is planning to repeal the draconian FCR within a week's time.

Head of the Fata Reforms Committee, Sartaj Aziz had said that work is underway to bring Fata into the 'mainstream' on the legal, administrative, economic and security fronts. Once these efforts are complete, the tribal areas will be merged with KP.

Neither Baloch nor Aziz, however, specified a date by which the KP-Fata merger would be complete.

The ‘Supreme Court and High Court (Extension of Jurisdiction to Fata) Bill 2017’, a piece of legislation seeking to extend the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Peshawar High Court to the tribal areas, was to be tabled in the National Assembly on Monday.

However, it was taken off the agenda for the day at the last minute, causing an uproar among parliamentarians. A number of opposition members stood up and lodged a strong protest over the government’s move to withdraw the bill from the agenda.

The intensity of the protest increased when two federal ministers — Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed and SAFRON Minister retired Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch — failed to give a satisfactory reason for the government’s decision to put off the introduction of the bill.

Lawmakers, mostly from Fata and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), chan­ted anti-government slogans, tore up the copies of the agenda and gathered in front of the speaker’s dais before staging a walkout, led by Leader of the Opposition Syed Khursheed Shah.