ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar told the National Assembly on Monday that like the main opposition PPP the ruling PML-N too would oppose two motions due to come before the house on Tuesday seeking to deseat 28 members of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf if the move was not withdrawn by then.

The finance minister, who often acts as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s political trouble-shooter, said he was making the announcement beforehand because he would leave on Tuesday morning to attend an International Monetary Fund meeting in Dubai.

Also read: PPP throws weight behind beleaguered PTI over de-seating uproar

He said Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman had agreed with him to withdraw the deseating motion tabled by one of the government-allied party’s lawmakers and that he hoped the opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) would do the same.

“If it were not withdrawn, our party will vote against that motion,” he said after narrating the prime minister’s meetings with his own party members and leaders of other parties in the past few days.

Dar says JUI-F chief has agreed to withdraw the deseating motion

“We will like them to stay in the house,” he added.

Leader of the Opposition Khursheed Ahmed Shah had already announced that his PPP would oppose the motions.

The two identical motions, which were tabled as early as April and seek to deseat 28 PTI lawmakers under Sub-Clause (2) of Article 64 of the constitution for remaining absent from the house for 40 consecutive days during their 126-day protest sit-in outside the Parliament House, were taken up on the present session’s first private members’ day on July 28.

But despite Mr Shah’s insistence that their fate be decided immediately without punishing the PTI, Mr Dar got the matter delayed for a week for the sake of consultations with the JUI-F and the MQM.

While a senior PTI member from Karachi, Arif Alvi, appreciated what he called Mr Dar’s sentiments, a PPP member, Mir Ejaz Jakhrani from Sindh, reiterated his party’s commitment to oppose the motions as did, on behalf of their groups, Jamaat-i-Islami member Sher Akbar Khan from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and G.G. Jamal from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

MQM parliamentary leader Farooq Sattar briefly met Information and Broadcasting Minister Pervaiz Rashid inside the house, but there was no immediate information of what transpired between them.

FIRST FOREST POLICY: Earlier, Environment Minis­ter Mushahidullah Khan, responding to a calling attention notice about flood devastation in the country, informed the house that he was preparing a draft of what would be Pakistan’s first forest policy to conserve forests to mitigate the effects of global warming.

He suggested that religious scholars, including Imam of the Kaaba and the sheikh of Eqypt’s Al Azhar Islamic university educate people about ways to counter global warming.

Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq referred the matter for a detailed study by the house standing committee on environment.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2015

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