Peshawar - While the tribal districts are merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to bring the ex-FATA region into the national mainstream, the merged areas now face a new problem: they may lose several seats in the legislature in case their population is proved to be fewer than that required for 12 seats.
Orakzai is also one of those tribal districts that face the population challenge. There has been apprehension that in case the population proves inadequate, Orakzai may lose its lone seat of the National Assembly and, even further, it may get merged into different districts, thus losing the status of an independent district.
The erstwhile FATA region was merged into KP province in the wake of the 25th Constitutional Amendment of May 2018, with an aim to provide the tribal people the right to appeal to the courts and several other rights. The merger resulted in establishment of the tribal districts and it also put an end to the law of Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), under which the tribals had suffered for decades.
PTI Orakzai district president Malik Saeedullah told The Nation that they did not accept the 2017 census of their area because it was conducted in the days when more than 75 percent population of the area had left the district due to military operation against militants.
Malik Saeedullah has also filed a petition in the Peshawar High Court against the census in which the population of the district has been shown lesser. According to the 1998 census, the population of Orakzai (the then FATA agency) was a little more than 2,25,000 while the last census of 2017 showed its population to be a little over 2,54,000.
Malik Saeedullah claimed that the population of Orakzai district was more than 600,000. He said that if efforts were not made on time, Orakzai might lose its funds and seats in the legislature, which would cause damage to the future of the coming generations. Orakzai was part of Frontier Region (FR) Kohat until 1973. However, Pakistan People’s Party’s founding leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto gave it the status of a [FATA] agency on the insistence of a local tribal Jirga during his visit to the area. After FATA-KP merger, Orakzai also turned into a settled district, comprising four tehsils of Lower Orakzai, Central Orakzai, Upper Orakzai and Ismailzai.
In the year 2008, the military launched operation in Darra Adamkhel, wherefrom the militants infiltrated into Orakzai, prompting the local elders to form Lashkars to fight the militants. In October 2008, Orakzai tribal elders were meeting in Ghaljo area to stage a Lashkar against TTP militants when a bomber struck there, killing more than 30 tribal elders and wounding more than 80 others present there.