- Minorities affairs minister tells Punjab Assembly ‘fake’ pastors involved in issuing marriage and death certificates will be brought to book
Punjab Minister for Human Rights and Minorities Affairs Khalil Tahir Sandhu on Thursday said that the district governments are registering marriages, deaths and divorces of the Christian community according to the law in the province.
Speaking during the question-answer session in the 21st session of the provincial assembly, the minister said that strict action was being taken against fake pastors as the Punjab government wanted to curb fake pastors from the province.
“According to the Local Government Act, 2013, the local governments are responsible for registering marriages and deaths without any discrimination of religion and they are doing their job vigilantly,” the minister said.
When Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf lawmaker Sunila Ruth pointed out that names of most of the pastors and bishops were not included in the marriage list which was causing a problem in the registration of marriages, Sandhu said that the lists were being taken from the Minority Advisory Council to verify the record of all pastors and bishops.
During the session, two bills were adopted with a simple majority including the Fatima Jinnah Medical University (Amended) Bill, 2015 while rejecting all the amendments of the opposition. Opposition parties submitted four amendments regarding the Fatima Jinnah Medical University bill but they were all rejected.
When Faiza Malik of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) remarked that there was a need to bring competent and well-accomplished people in universities to improve the quality of education, Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said it was mandatory for vice-chancellors to have experience of 15 years as a professor and they must also have eight publications to their credit as a professor. “This criteria is already enough to make the quality of education better in universities,” he added.
Speaking about the observations of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) about Punjab’s pro-women bill, Sanaullah said the Punjab Assembly was not legally bound to act upon the recommendations of the CII. The Council had not sent any recommendations to the House, he added.
Sanaullah further said the chief minister would soon announce a package of Rs 100 billion for farmers as he wanted to see Punjab economically stronger.
Earlier in the day, the session was started with a delay of one hour at 11am.
The 21st session of the Punjab Assembly was prorogued for an indefinite period. According to the order of the Punjab governor, “In exercise of the powers conferred under Article 109 of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, I, Malik Muhammad Rafique Rajwana, Governor of the Punjab, hereby prorogue Provincial Assembly of the Punjab with effect from 26 May 2016 (Thursday) after the conclusion of the proceedings of the Assembly on that day”.