ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Tuesday carried out some legislative business on a messy private members day as legislators managed to introduce five bills, including two constitution amendment bills, amid noisy proceedings due to inability of Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri to maintain order in the house.

The movers remained confused about the status of their bills after presenting them before the house and on two occasions, the deputy speaker rejected the bills on a voice vote and did not order a headcount despite repeated requests and challenge by the movers.

The introduced bills, however, will remain in the cold storage as Speaker Asad Qaiser has not been able to constitute the house committees due to a stand-off between the government and the opposition over the issue of chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

Bills will remain in the cold storage in absence of house committees that minister says will be constituted within a week

The deputy speaker kept on announcing that the bills stood introduced without referring them to the yet-to-be-formed committees, while Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Mohammad Khan claimed that the committees would be constituted within a week or so.

At the outset, a non-serious opposition, while protesting over the refusal by the chair to give them the floor to speak on points of order, kept on opposing each and every bill introduced by the treasury members. And while doing so, they even did not allow Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) member Kishwer Zehra to introduce a bill seeking allocation of seats in parliament for the disabled persons which had been supported by all the parties, including those in the opposition.

Puzzled by the deputy speaker’s decision of not granting her leave to introduce the bill, the MQM lawmaker kept on shouting and protesting, informing the house that the bill had been signed by 18 members representing all parties in the house.

Ms Zehra even announced that she was withdrawing all her bills on the agenda as a mark of protest, but later changed her decision when the deputy speaker said it would be brought to the agenda on the next private members day after Ali Mohammad Khan and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawmaker Syed Naveed Qamar admitted that they had rejected the bill by mistake.

Earlier, Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, a lawmaker from minority community belonging to the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), protested against the deputy speaker’s decision of not ordering a headcount when the opposition members voted against his bill seeking amendment to the Constitution for repealing of an article that allowed sale and purchase of liquor on religious occasions of non-Muslim minority communities. Some treasury members also opposed the bill despite the fact that the parliamentary secretary for law and justice Maleeka Bukhari had not opposed the bill.

Dr Vankwani was surprised over the deputy speaker’s act of ignoring his challenge to his ruling, as earlier he had been allowed to introduce a constitution amendment bill seeking changes in five articles of the Constitution after which the house gave 89-86 vote in his favour. He asked the chair to allow a headcount so that the nation could see the members who were against the ban on the sale of liquor in the country. He said Article 37 was “discriminatory” to the minority members as all the religions, including Hinduism and Sikhism, had banned use of liquor.

Walkout

The PTI lawmaker said despite the fact that Pakistan was an Islamic republic, liquor was being sold in the country round the year in the name of religious minorities. His remarks that “if Pakistan is an Islamic country then the members should unanimously approve his bill” angered the opposition, especially those belonging to the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F), who were of the opinion that the lawmaker from the religious minority should not have used the word “if” and he should know that Pakistan was an Islamic country. The opposition members also staged a token walkout over it.

Besides the two constitution amendment bills, the NA witnessed introduction of the Pakistan Psychological Council Bill 2018 by Riaz Fatyana, the Elections (Amendment) Bill 2018 by Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali and the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils (Amendment) Bill 2018 by Alia Kamran.

Through the first constitution (amendment) bill introduced by Dr Vankwani, the mover sought setting up of women universities in all cities having a population of 500,000 or more. Through the same bill, the mover also sought increase in the reserved seats for minorities in the national and provincial assemblies, besides seeking right of dual votes for them.

Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali, through the other constitution (amendment) bill, sought an increase in the number of seats of Chitral in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2018