Responding to National Assembly (NA) Opposition Leader Nisar Ali Khan’s criticism of the government for delays in constituting a parliamentary committee to oversee implementation of the unanimous resolution passed by the All-Parties Conference (APC), Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Monday the government had written to the NA speaker to seek a list of nominees for the committee.
Gilani said the committee would monitor progress of the implementation of APC resolutions. He said it was now up to parliament to expedite the nomination process as the matter had been referred to the speaker. He said the parliamentary leaders had been asked to nominate their representatives as members of the parliamentary committee.
Earlier, Nisar had raised concerns over the delay in the constitution of the committee, saying: “The session is going to adjourn tomorrow (Tuesday) but the parliamentary committee has not been constituted yet… On the other hand, both the National Assembly speaker and deputy speaker have embarked upon their foreign visits to Albania and Switzerland respectively… nothing is more important than this House.” Gilani said the absence of the speaker and deputy speaker at the same time was because of an overlapping in the dates of their visits abroad. “It has happened for the first time in four years that both [of them] are abroad on the same day,” he said. He said under the rules, the conduct of the speaker could not be discussed in the House.
Nisar said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) team had consulted the government team on the Defence Housing Authority bill and the government had assured the PML-N that the bill would not be brought to the House without taking the opposition on board. “I ask the government to circulate the copies of the draft bill among the members so that they can see the gross discrepancies in it,” he said. Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) criticised President Asif Ali Zardari, without naming him, for the procedure adopted in the appointment of the new National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman. “The government does good works in a clumsy manner… it appointed a good man to the important post but it did not follow the true spirit of law and meaningful consultation was not done with the opposition leader on Fasih Bokhari’s appointment,” he added.
