Women’s protection bill: CII to provide feedback on controversial law

Members to deliberate each of the clauses of the proposed law

ISLAMABAD: The country’s top constitutional religious body will convene next month to deliberate on its women’s protection law after a first draft was finalised.

Last month, the council proposed its own women protection bill, recommending ‘a light beating’ to a wife who defied her husband’s will, which was widely criticised by the public.



“Chairman CII will summon next meeting [of the council] in July and proposed [women’s protection] bill will be on top of the agenda,” CII Secretary Dr Ikramul Haq told The Express Tribune on Monday. It is in that meeting, Haq added, that the council will define what “light beating” entails. The bill, drafted by JUI-F’s Mufti Imdadullah, contains some 163 clauses. Of these, the council has so far discussed 31.

The CII had drafted its own bill after rejecting Punjab’s controversial Protection of Women against Violence Act (PPWA) 2015 while Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa continued work on its domestic violence bill.



The lone female member of the council, Dr Samia Raheel Qazi, has also been handed a copy of the draft law to study and is expected to present her suggestions at the meeting next month. She was absent at the last meeting of the council held earlier in June.

At that meeting, three members including Justice (retd) Manzoor Hussain Gilani, Dr Noor Ahmed Shahtaaz and Muhammad Abdullah, had raised objections on many clauses in the bill.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2016.