KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly on Monday passed unanimously “The Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2014” in pursuance of the Supreme Court decision to amend the LG law to empower the Election Commission of Pakistan to carry out delimitation of union councils and wards in municipal committees, town committees and corporations.

The bill, which was introduced by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Dr Sikander Mandhro, was passed into law after a brief discussion after its third reading clause by clause.

The amendments, besides authorisation of the ECP to carry out delimitation, retain both the names of union council and the union committee and allow their use to refer to the same unit and direct political parties to submit a list of names and nomination papers of the candidates for reserved seats for woman, peasants or labourers and non-Muslims in a council other than union council and union committee and their list ought to be published.

Another amendment made in Section 36 after sub-section (1) said: “If any candidate or after the election if the member found by the election commission contravening the provisions - citizen of Pakistan, not less than 21 years, enrolled in the electoral rolls of a ward or council, has worked against the integrity of the country - stand disqualified for a period of four years.”

The session, which was called to order at 12 noon, was adjourned by Deputy Speaker Syeda Shehla Raza at 4 pm to meet again at 10 am on Tuesday.

Two other bills on the order of the day, the Sindh Workers Welfare Fund Bill, 2014 and the Dow University of Health Sciences (Amendment) Bill, 2014, were deferred till next session on a motion tabled by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Dr Siknader Mandhro. The session also adopted five resolutions which were tabled out of turn one by one and when these were put to vote were unanimously passed.

The first resolution congratulated PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari who made his political debut by addressing a rally on Oct 18th vowing to resist extremism and lead Pakistan to prosperity and development.

The second greeted Malala Yousufzai on being awarded the Nobel prize while the third resolution condemned the Indian Army attack on civilian areas and violation of LoC resulting in loss of 12 lives. It also paid tribute to Pakistan Army for countering the Indian army attacks bravely.

The fourth resolution urged the Sindh government to approach the federal government and get support price of cotton fixed at Rs1000 per 40 kg and that of rice at Rs500 per 40 kg.

The last resolution called for establishing Mohammad Ibrahim Joyo Bureau of Translation as a tribute to the intellectual who has devoted his entire life to the pursuit of intellectual and educational renaissance in Sindh.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2014