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Wednesday, March 06, 2013
PML-F moves SC against MQM’s opp leader slotBy Hasnaat Malik
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) MPA Muhammad Shaharyar Khan Mahar on Tuesday filed a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking a declaration that his party and not the MQM is the opposition party in Sindh.
It must be noted that Sindh Assembly Speaker Nisar Ahmed Khoro has already issued a notification declaring MQM leader Syed Sardar Ahmed as the new opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly. Shaharyar Khan Mahar, the son of Ghous Bux Khan Mahar, filed the petition through his counsel Muzaffar Ali Laghari, making the federal government through the law secretary, Sindh government through its chief secretary, Sindh law secretary, Sindh Assembly speaker and deputy speaker respondents.
He requested the court to declare that the caretaker chief minister in Sindh would be appointed in consultation with the PML-F, not the MQM. The petitioner also pleaded that the court should also define the parameters and scope of the functions of caretaker chief minister and his cabinet. He stated that after the insertion of Article 224 (1-A) in the constitution through the 18th Amendment, the opposition leader of the assembly concerned had been given an important role by allowing participating in the consultation process of setting up a caretaker government.
Before the 18th Amendment, the role of opposition leader was not described in the legislation, but for the first time through the amendment, a specific role and contribution has been assigned to the office of opposition leader, the petition emphasised. Mahar alleged that the “purported, collusive and malafide act of the respondents in the petition” was nothing but to frustrate the very intent, the spirit and purpose of the consultation as contemplated by Article 224(1-A).
The petition alleged that the “deliberate, malicious and malafide activities of the ruling coalition comprising PPP and MQM, to foist a caretaker chief minister and the caretaker government of their choice, by engineering a deliberate plot of going through the charade of MQM’s disenchantment with the larger coalition partner PPP and sudden demand of allocation of seats on the opposition benches in the provincial assembly and putting in place a phony leader of the opposition to tailor the caretaker government is going to adversely effect the people of Sindh”.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk