The Sindh Assembly (SA) on Thursday formed a special committee comprising representatives of all parliamentary parties to look into the legality of the National People’s Party (NPP)-backed resolution that has caused a lot of politicking during the last two sessions of the provincial legislature.
Bearing signatures of more than 50 lawmakers from all political parties – expect the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) – the resolution demands withdrawal of a clause calling for deletion of Article 239(4) in the 20th constitutional amendment bill tabled by the MQM in the National Assembly for the creation of new provinces.
SA Speaker Nisar Khuhro, who called the house to order at 11:20 am on Thursday against the scheduled time of 10:00 am, announced constituting a special body under Rule 174 when NPP lawmaker Masroor Jatoi repeated his demand for tabling the disputed resolution.
“The committee would scrutinise this resolution in which we could adjust our apprehensions and that could show the strength of Sindh,” Khuhro gave the ruling, addressing a positive Jatoi.
The speaker said the body would comprise four members from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), two from the MQM and one each from all the other parliamentary parties represented in the SA.
He said the members would be nominated by the respective parliamentary leaders of the parties.
“Let’s say we would give a term of reference to the committee to examine the resolution for ensuring its legal appropriateness,” said Khuhro.
He used the phrase “as soon as possible” for the proceedings of the committee after NPP legislators Masroor Jatoi and Arif Jatoi asked when the committee’s task would be completed.
“All the members [of this committee] are answerable to the people, and if they delay their report, the people will question them,” Khuhro told the Jatoi brothers.
He said they “have to meet for 30 more days until the 4th or 5th of April”, which is when the parliamentary year would end.
Later, in a post-session media talk, Masroor Jatoi warned that if the committee failed to present its report within the next two weeks, his party representative (Arif Jatoi) would resign from the body.
When I called Arif Jatoi, he confirmed that he would tender his resignation from the committee if the body could not come up with a conclusive report within a fortnight.
Earlier, responding to queries during the Question Hour, Sindh Local Government (LG) Minister Agha Siraj Durrani told the house that the LG elections would be held within 90 days of the day when all political parties reach an agreement.
Durrani said his government is working on introducing an LG system that would be better than those enacted in both 1979 and 2001.
Moreover, it being the last day of the current session, two private bills – the Protection of Religious Minorities’ Properties Bill-2012 tabled by Saleem Khursheed Khokhar, and the Registration (Sindh Amendment) Bill-2012 jointly tabled by Syed Khalid Ahmed, Nishat Muhammad, Rehan Zafar and Manzar Imam – were also introduced in the house.