Recommendations of a few members dominate CII, says only female member

• PPP demands disbandment of ‘dangerously irrelevant’ CII
• Senator Babar says frustrated with its pronouncements, some people call CII ‘medieval nonsense at public expense’

 Dr Samia Raheel Qazi, daughter of former Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed and the only female member of Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), has demanded Tuesday her opinion be given due importance and her suggestions be made part of the council’s report.

Qazi, in a letter written to the director general research of CII, said her proposals and recommendations regarding the two last meetings of the council were ignored.

“My suggestions and observations are not given proper place and due importance regarding the women protection bills of Punjab and KPK,” Dr Qazi added.

She elaborated and said that recommendations and notes of a few members are dominating reports made after council meetings.

“It seems that only two or three members of the council are active while others are silent,” she said.

‘CII should be disbanded’:

Meanwhile speaking in the Senate, senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Senator Farhatullah Babar has proposed to disband the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) and transfer the Rs 100 million allocated for it to the National Commission on Status of Women (NCSW).

Taking part in the budget debate on Tuesday, Babar said that the CII had already submitted its final report to parliament in 1997 and had become “dangerously irrelevant”.

He said the CII had no constitutional role to play and frustrated with its pronouncements, some people called it “medieval non-sense at public expense”.

The PPP leader also took exception to the allocation of Rs 250 million made for a new body National Institute of Human Rights being set up under an executive order in the presence of the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR) set up under an act of parliament as an independent, powerful and autonomous body.

The act provided for a special fund to enable the NCHR perform its functions, Babar argued, and demanded the Rs 250 million allocated to the new body be transferred to this special fund.

Upon this, Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani referred the matter to the Senate Finance Committee, directing it to examine the issue of setting up a parallel human rights body for what he said “some blue-eyed boy”.

Senator Farhatullah Babar further said that the federation had been gravely undermined by making the China Pakistan Economic Corridor project “controversial”. “This is evident from the allocations made and pace of work on the western and eastern routes of the corridor,” he added, and warned against the decisions taken during the May 28, 2015 all-party conference held under the chair of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Babar pleaded for special allocations for addressing the issues of climate change, environmental degradation and population for sustainable development.

The PPP leader said he did not blame the finance minster for not being able to give a “welfare budget”, adding that “we are a security-driven state where every issue is viewed from the prism of security and not welfare of the people”.