ABSTRACT
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATAs) is governed by political agents and the president of Pakistan, while the five PATA districts of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are governed by the provincial governor, who reports to the president of Pakistan. In 1849 the British East India Company acquired the Sikh Kingdom, stretching from the Sutlej River, which runs through present-day northern India and Pakistan, to the border of Afghanistan, including the territory that later came to be known as the North-West Frontier Province. After independence in 1947, the Pakistan government sought to control FATA and the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATAs) by installing heavily supported landlords in the regions, empowering them to distribute government contracts for construction projects and to grant permission for migration outside FATA and Pakistan. In the election of 1947, the region voted to join the Pakistan state by a bare majority of 50.1 percent, with the Khidmatgar boycotting the election.
