PML-N MPA Sheikh Allauddin pointed out a violation of the Punjab Assembly Rules of Procedure 1997 by the government in dealing with adjournment motions on Tuesday.
The session resumed at 11.25am with Sardar Sher Ali Gorchani in the chair and Chaudhry Abdul Waheed replying to questions about the Prisons Department.
Allauddin pointed out that rules were being broken in the way that adjournment motions were being dealt with. He said that according to Rule 88, the mover of an adjournment motion and the minister or parliamentary secretary concerned were allowed to speak for 20 minutes.
But Human Rights Minister Tahir Khalil Sindhu had been replying to adjournment motions and call attention notices since the last session, which was a violation of procedure since he was not the minister concerned, Allauddin said. Law Minister Rana Sanaullah was the minister concerned, he added. He asked the speaker to stop the illegal practice of Sindhu replying to adjournment motions.
Allauddin said adjournment motions were an important way for a member to raise pressing issues. But government departments typically tried to ignore them, or when they were forced to reply, to mislead on the issue, he said. He recently moved an adjournment motion about the issuing of licences to hunt the endangered Houbara bustard, but it was not to be entertained until June 2014.
The speaker instructed Sindhu not to respond to adjournment motions and asked Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan to do so.
Resolutions
The house took up two resolutions out of turn on Tuesday and passed them both unanimously. One resolution, moved by Jamaat-i-Islami Parliamentary Leader Dr Waseem Akhtar, condemned the war crimes convictions of JI leaders in Bangladesh regarding their role in the atrocities committed during the secession of then East Pakistan in 1971.
“The PA condemns actions carried out in the name of so-called war crimes against political figures in Bangladesh which are against basic human rights. International institutions and lawyers’ bodies also condemn it. The house demands that the federal government ask the United Nations and Security Council to take up this issue,” reads the resolution.
In the second resolution, moved by Kanwal Nauman of the PML-N, the house paid tribune to Nelson Mandela and his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa.
Five resolutions were on the agenda of the house and three were passed. The other two were withdrawn as the movers were absent.
Saqlain Anwar Sipra of the PML-N moved a resolution for the College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences Jhang to be upgraded and renamed as Mian Sharif Veterinary University.
Opposition Leader Mian Mehmoodur Rasheed of the PTI moved a resolution for the construction of a mausoleum at the grave of Dulla Bhatti Shaheed and for the removal of encroachments at the site.
Another resolution by Nauman, calling for more action to help special people and the disabled, was passed with amendments. The session will resume on Wednesday .
Published in The Express Tribune, December 11th, 2013.