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Saturday, November 02, 2013


Senate agenda remains unaddressed amid opp boycott

By Ijaz Kakakhel

ISLAMABAD: The Senate left most of its agenda unaddressed as opposition parties continued their boycott of the proceedings in the fifth sitting of 98th session of the Upper House of Parliament on Friday.

Senate Chairman Nayyar Hussain Bukhari presided over the sitting in the presence of leader of the House along with the parliamentary leaders of JUI-F and MQM.

Senators from opposition parties, including the PPP, ANP, PML-Q and BNP-A, continued their strike against the behavior of Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan and all the questions, except that of JUI-F Senator Talha Mehmood, remained unaddressed.

Twenty-one senators were present in the House at the start of proceedings when ANP Senator Zahid Khan pointed out the lack of quorum and left the plenary. The chair asked for the assembly bells to be rung for five minutes and later the proceedings resumed despite the quorum was found short of a member on a recount.

The Senate chairman told the House that “total number of senators is 25 which is less than the required number of quorum (26) but as per rules, the quorum pointing senator should also be included and, therefore, the total number is 26 and now the House is in order”.

Only one starred question addressed to the Ministry of Finance received response. Additionally, three supplementary questions were asked. Answering the question of Ministry of Finance, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that there is no tax culture in Pakistan and everyone was trying to avoid paying tax to the government. However, he said the government was trying its level best to improve the tax culture in the country and put the economy on right track.

Leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq told the House that it would be better if both sides were present in the House. He said that the government has formed a committee of four senators – Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo, Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, Zafar Ali Shah and Abbas Khan Afridi – to hold a meeting with opposition senators and convinced them to come back to the House.

Speaking on the occasion, Mir Hasil Bizinjo said it is “unfortunate that today the Senate’s agenda remained unaddressed because it was mainly related to opposition senators”.

During the current session, it was decided to discuss drone attacks, foreign policy, economic situation of the country, price hike but still all important issues remained unaddressed.

Nayyar Hussain Bukhari said that good parliamentary practices require that both opposition and ruling parties should be present in the House. As leader of the House, Raja Zafarul Haq said that a committee has been constituted to bring back the opposition members to the House which he called a good sign. He suggested that the issue should be resolved with opposition members in the next two days.

The Senate proceedings continued for 39 minutes after they started at 11.52 am instead of the scheduled time of 10.30am.


Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk



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