Inquiry body fails to evolve consensus on final report

• Interior Ministry source points out differences between civil, military members
• Military side members submit dissenting note to weeks back compiled report

Efforts are on to build consensus over the report of the inquiry committee into the ‘planted news story’ about a high-level meeting on the national security and the report would only be made public once consensus would be achieved between the committee members, a well-placed source told the Pakistan Today.

The federal government had formed an inquiry committee on November 7 last year to investigate a media report which the military establishment had termed was a “planted story.” Later, Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif had sacked then Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Pervaiz Rashid after a preliminary investigation.

Requesting not to be named, a source in the Ministry of Interior Affairs said that the commission had compiled the report weeks back but due to the differences between members of the civil and the military backgrounds had led to delay in making the report public.

“Actually, Commission Chairman Justice (retd) Amir Raza Khan had made it clear to the federal government that the report would only be shared with the public at large if the members of the commission agreed to the report,” the source said.

“The members from the military side had submitted a dissenting note to the report,” he said.

“The commission chairman wants to ensure that the report should be made public once the members agree to it. Hence, the commission had been given an extension to its timeline. Despite the lapse of the timeline, the commission has failed in evolving consensus,” the source said.

On October 6, 2016, a staffer of a national daily had published a story titled, “Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tell military.” The story had described what transpired in a high-level meeting in which the civil leadership reportedly criticised the military’s policies on militancy. Following the day, then army chief General Raheel Sharif raised the issue at a meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, terming the news story as a “planted story.”

The government repeatedly rebutted the story as ‘false and fabricated,’ but the denials failed to satisfy the military, which called for unmasking and punishing those who had planted it because it was a ‘breach’ of the national security.