ECP rules: Suspended K-P MPAs denied entry in assembly hall

PTI, JUI-F and JI lawmakers sent back

PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly secretariat on Tuesday did not allow those provincial assembly members whose membership has been suspended by the Election Commission of Pakistan to attend the session.

Speaker Asad Qaiser had directed the secretariat staff that no lawmaker who has not submitted his/her statement of assets and liability to the ECP would attend the session.

According to a list maintained by the assembly secretariat, some 45 lawmakers have yet to fulfil the ECP requirement. The staffers were seen sending back suspended lawmakers from the gate of the assembly hall.

“We have sent back Arbab Jehandad and Khaliqur Rehman [PTI lawmakers], Malik Noor Saleem Khan and Romana Jaleel [JUI-F] and Rashida Riffat [JI],” said an official of the assembly secretariat deployed at the entrance to the hall.

The ECP had sent a list of suspended lawmakers to the assembly secretariat on October 15, stating that lawmakers’ membership had been suspended until they submit their statements.

The speaker announced on the floor of the house that the members should submit their statements to the ECP without further delay. “Until then they would not be permitted to attend the session and would not be allowed to attend the meetings of the committees of the house.”

Moreover, he got angry at bureaucracy and directed the K-P chief secretary to take disciplinary action against those officers who were not taking the assembly business seriously.

The speaker warned that if disciplinary action was not taken within 10 days, then it would be taken as a “breach of the privilege of the house”.

“I express serious concerns over this issue,” Qaiser said commenting over the response of different departments who did not answer the questions asked by lawmakers. It seems the departments are not taking the house and its business seriously, he said.

“The chief secretary is intimated to take strict disciplinary action against those administrative secretaries in 10 days and submit a report in this regard. If the disciplinary action was not taken in 10 days, then it would be taken as a violation of this house’s privilege,” the speaker ruled.

JUI-F’s Mufti Said Janan complained that the questions lawmakers have been raising went unanswered by different provincial departments in the specified time.

The house did not pass the much-discussed K-P Prohibition of Tobacco and Protection of Non-Smokers Health Bill 2016, as PTI lawmaker Mehmood Jan raised some objections to the bill and asked the speaker to hand it over to the select committee, which the speaker did.

The house also failed to pass the K-P Commission on the Status of Women Bill 2016, due to early adjournment of the sitting because of quorum.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 19^th, 2016.