ISLAMABAD – Implementation Commission on 18th Constitutional Amendment chairman Raza Rabbani on Thursday rejected the arguments of Education Minister Sardar Aseff Ahmed Ali against the devolution of the ministry to the provinces and said all the ministries in the concurrent list would be devolved to the provinces.
Education Minister Sardar Aseff Ahmed Ali was, however, confident that the ministry would not be devolved to the provinces as it falls under the federal list and not under the concurrent list. “The commission heard our plea sympathetically and promised to hold another sitting to further discuss this issue,” the minister told Pakistan Today after the meeting.
He further said the ministry would also consider taking up the matter with the Council of Common Interests (CCI) if the matter was not resolved.
A source quoted Rabbani as telling the education minister that mandate of the commission was not to amend the Constitution; rather it was set up to implement the constitutional amendments in letter and spirit.
Earlier, the education minister told the commission that education was a sensitive subject and handing it over to the provinces could jeopardise the national cohesion, said the source.
“There must be a uniform curriculum for all the provinces. If the ministry was devolved to the provinces, each province would have its own curricula on lingual basis. He also informed the commission that the education ministry could only be devolved by the prime minister’s orders and not by the implementation commission,” the source quoted the minister as saying.
Aseff told the meeting that all over the world, education ministry was a federal subject and could not be handed over to the provinces.
“The the affairs of Islamic education, Wafaqul Madaris and Tanzeemul Madaris has already been devolved to the provinces under the concurrent list. The charge of research centres of the ministry has also been handed over to the provincial governments. So there is no need to hand over the education ministry to the provinces,” Aseff told the commission.
However, the commission did not agree to the arguments of the education minister. The commission also heard Religious Affairs Minister Syed Khurshid Shah on the handing over of distribution of Zakat funds to the provinces. The Zakat collection should remain with the federal government, the minister said. The meeting also discussed the handing over of the ministry of livestock to the provinces.
