ISLAMABAD, Dec 17: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement vowed in the National Assembly on Monday to carry on protesting against some perceived political remarks by a Supreme Court bench while the government-allied party said its lawyers were considering a legal response to a contempt notice issued to self-exiled party leader Altaf Hussain.

“We will raise our voice at every forum and will not let any opportunity pass by,” Wasim Akhtar, a party lawmaker, told the house before some of his remarks in a hard-hitting speech were expunged by Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi.

Mr Akhtar, who spoke on a point of order after MQM lawmakers entered the house together towards the fag-end of the sitting apparently after a meeting, said the Supreme Court’s contempt of court notice, which requires the London-based MQM chief to appear before it on Jan 7, had “reached us” and was being considered by the party’s legal and constitutional experts for a response “within the confines of law”.

But the MQM member, who called a purported description of the MQM’s mandate in Karachi as “monopoly” as “most pinching” political remark, said: “If judges make political remarks, they would be responded to politically.”

Mr Akhtar described a court order for a fresh delimitation of constituencies in Karachi for the next elections as a “plot to rob the vote bank” of one party and said it had “injured the hearts” of what he called “the descendents of the founders of Pakistan” supporting his party.

“If our forefathers had not made sacrifices (for the creation of Pakistan), these judges would not have been there,” he said.

The deputy speaker referred to Article 68 of the Constitution prohibiting discussion in parliament “with respect to the conduct of any judge of the Supreme Court or of a high court in the discharge of his duties” and ordered expunction of some remarks specified by him from the official record of house proceedings after Law and Justice Minister Farooq H. Naek supported the chair’s discretion to decide about any speaker’s remarks and Mr Akhtar insisted he was objecting only to political remarks of the court and a decision already given “which we have rejected”.

The MQM brought up the issue in the National Assembly a day after the detailed ruling of a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, was issued and following protests by MQM followers in Karachi and some other parts of Sindh province.

Earlier, the government introduced a constitution amendment bill aimed to implement a recent cabinet decision to increase seats for minorities in the National Assembly to 14 from 10 and in the four provincial assemblies – to 12 from nine in Sindh, to 10 from eight in Punjab, to four each from three in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan – and a bill seeking to amend tax laws mainly aimed to bring more tax-payers into the tax net.

The house passed a government bill seeking continuation of the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan set up as a body corporate under commerce ministry’s administrative control through a presidential ordinance in 2006, with some amendments proposed by the standing committee on commerce such as exclusion of provincial chief secretaries from a management board.