KARACHI - The Sindh Assembly, on its Private Member’s Day on Tuesday, discussed the issues ranging from missing persons to Musharraf’s return, but desisted from giving due consideration to private bills, resolutions and motions which the proceedings were meant for.
With lawmakers firmly sticking to their habit of turning up late, the legislature met one-and-a-half-hour late than its scheduled time of 10am under the speaker, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro.
At the outset of the proceedings, the House took up the issues of public importance, raised by certain legislators. Having consumed a little time on it, the House then proceeded to the question-hour session pertaining to the Works & Services Department.
Later on, it resumed discussion on the resolution tabled for paying honour to PPP’s founder leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Measly 25 members from the ruling party were present.
However, Kulsoom Chandio, Haji Munawar Abbasi, Farzana Baloch, Nadeem Ahmed Bhutto, Haji Mujadad Isran, Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto, Akhtar Jadoon and Ali Nawaz Shah Rizvi, while delivering speeches on the resolution, paid glowing tribute to the party’s founding father and country’s first democratically-elected premier for his services to the masses.
The PPP ministers asserted that the dictators had plotted to eliminate the PPP but they all failed in their indiscriminate aims. Similarly, they added, undemocratic forces conspiring against the PPP government would ultimately taste defeat.
Later, the resolution was unanimously passed, with PPP lawmakers reaffirming their commitment to follow in the footprints of their martyred chief ZAB.
As the House adopted the resolution, Law Minister Ayaz Soomro rose and urged the chair to adjourn the session until Friday, saying, “MQM lawmakers have to attend a public gathering scheduled for Thursday (tomorrow) in Sukkur.
The law minister’s request was backed by MQM’s parliamentary leader Syed Sardar Ahmed.
Nevertheless, PML-F’s Nusrat Sehar Abbasi, whose resolutions and motions were on Tuesday’s agenda, pointed out that although it was a Private Members’ Day, no any relevant business was taken up for discussion. She asked the chair to hand down a ruling for retaining the same business on the next Private Members’ Day.
Upon this, crafty Sindh Minister for Archives Muhammad Rafique took the floor and said there was still floodwater standing on roads and swathes and MPAs wanted to go to their constituencies to oversee dewatering activities.
Supporting Ayaz Soomro’s plea for putting off the session, Rafique further said that as former president Pervez Mushrraf had announced his return, the law minister himself would be watching over the cleaning of a C-class barrack in Landhi jail, where the retired army general would be kept after his arrival.