PESHAWAR: Attorney General of Pakistan Munir A Malik on Thursday assured the Peshawar High Court that he would take up with the federal government the matter of redeployment of Frontier Constabulary (FC) platoons to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from other provinces and Islamabad.
A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Malik Manzoor Hussain took up the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s petition for hearing about FC return.
The AGP Munir A Malik said the matter was between the province and federal government and under Article 184 of Constitution, the Supreme Court was the competent forum to hear the case, not the high court.
He also informed the bench that under Article 148 of the Constitution, the federal government can call civil armed forces to any part of the country, and thus FC was called.
However, the chief justice observed that it was not a dispute between the province and federal government as the federal government had agreed to return the FC platoons, but now it was adopting delaying tactics in returning the remaining FC platoons to the province.
The chief justice observed that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police had been greatly affected due to shifting the fighting force to other provinces as hundreds of policemen were killed on the border areas with tribal agencies in militant attacks.
He also remarked that this force was raised only for the protection of the tribal borders by the British rulers through FC Act 1915 and 100 percent personnel were recruited from tribal areas to stop infiltration of militants and other criminals from Fata and Frontier Regions (FRs) into the settled areas of the province.
Unfortunately, he said this fighting force is being used for other duties like security of embassies, VIPs protocol in Islamabad and other provinces and people of the province were left at the mercy of the militants.
The AGP informed the bench that he would take up the matter with the federal government and would try to address the reservations of the province due to the current law and order situation.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, in its petition, had claimed that currently 294 FC platoons were operating outside the province though the force was basically meant to protect the areas bordering Fata.
