PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly has frequently been introducing amendments to several laws of public importance as apparently these laws were not properly deliberated in and outside the house before their passage.

Experts on the subject believe that lack of expertise of the lawmakers in legislation and incompetence of bureaucracy are some of the reasons for this phenomenon. “Actually bureaucrats of the respective departments draft the bills while sometimes such bills land in the assembly directly from Bani Gala,” an official said on the condition of anonymity.

The laws being amended time and again include: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act, 2013; The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission Act, 2014; The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information Act, 2013 and The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015.

Awami National Party’s parliamentary leader in the provincial assembly, Sardar Hussain Babak, told Dawn that the government had been making laws which suited its interests rather than that of the masses.

“The bills are passed without the required debate inside the house and consultations on draft bills outside the house,” he said.

Mr Babak said that the draft bills should be discussed in seminars and workshops and shared with the media for incorporating public opinion before their tabling in the assembly for passage. However, such process was never adopted in legislation which had been causing frequent amendments and litigation, he said.

ANP’s Babak claims bills are passed without proper debate

“The government wants to take credit for more legislation that is why it often passes the laws in a hurry and even without in-house debate during the passage,” he said.

Besides other laws, Mr Babak said that six amendments had been introduced recently in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act, 2013. So many amendments in only two years speak volume for the government’s inefficiency.

The consequent litigation and repeated amendments in the laws put the assembly in an awkward situation, he said, adding that most of the amendments had shown the ulterior motives of the ruling parties.

Mr Babak said that the latest amendment in the LG law was against the spirit of democracy. Under the amended law, if a nazim of the district or tehsil/town council fails to approve the budget, he/she has to seek fresh vote of confidence from the council concerned. If the nazim fails to get the vote of confidence, then he will cease to hold the office, he said.

When told that the opposition members are also not playing their due role in legislation, he said that Speaker Asad Qaiser was not giving proper time to them to criticise the quick process of the lawmaking. “The Speaker is not impartial rather he has been playing a role of PTI worker,” he claimed.

However, the provincial government has been defending such amendments in laws.

Spokesman for the provincial government Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, when contacted, took the credit for more legislation in his government’s tenure. He said that new laws had been introduced in the province for reforms in several government departments as recommended by the working groups set up by the government in early days of its formation.

“We practically implement each law. Sometime flaws in a law surface when it goes for implementation in the field,” he said. The spokesman said that making legislation and amendments was an ongoing process.

Giving an example, he said that on the recommendations of the working group, drastic amendments were introduced in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities Act, 2012, mostly regarding the appointment of vice-chancellors. “But we are going to amend that law again by relaxing criteria for VCs’ appointment as under the existing law the candidates hardly fulfil the criteria,” he said.

Asked why the draft law was not put for discussion in the media or seminars, the spokesman said that these forums were also good for discussion, but each draft bill went through a proper consultation on the department level.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2015