Rare move: Senate panel issues warrant for secretary

K-P Industries Secretary had failed to appear before committee

ISLAMABAD:

In a rare move, a parliamentary panel on Friday issued an arrest warrant for a provincial secretary who did not appear before it despite being issued notices.

Exercising the powers of a civil court, the Senate Standing Committee on Rules of Procedure and Privileges unanimously directed the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) inspector general to ensure the appearance of K-P Industries Secretary Sajid Jadoon in the panel’s next hearing.



Jadoon had ignored two notices of the panel to attend the meeting to defend a privilege motion against him moved by Awami National Party’s Senator Zahid Khan. The senator moved the motion in response to an alleged display of rudeness by Jadoon – who was a public health secretary for the K-P engineering department at the time – towards a lawmaker.

The motion was moved in the upper house on June 4 this year. The house referred the matter to the committee.

Appearing before the panel on Friday, the incumbent K-P public health secretary said that while he was unaware of the reason behind Jadoon’s failure to show up the first time, he could not appear in response to the second notice because he was out of the country on an official trip.



The panel took serious exception to this conduct of the secretary. Senator Raza Rabbani asked Colonel (Rtd) Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, head of the panel, to issue arrest warrants against the official. “No trip and no assignment is important than Parliament,” Rabbani said.

Mashhadi was not clear about the rules but on the insistence of Senator Rabbani he consulted Senator Aitzaz Ahsan and the secretary of the committee.

They backed Senator Rabbani’s view and told Mashhadi that a parliamentary committee can exercise the powers of a civil court and it has no need to ask IG for issuance of warrants. To a question, asked by the Karachi commissioner as to whether such a precedent was available in the past, Senator Raza Rabbani replied yes. But he did not cite any specific case.

The committee disposed of another privilege motion against the Sindh chief secretary when the mover of the motion Senator Tanveerul Haq Thanvi did not press the matter. Thanvi said that he moved the motion due to a misunderstanding and had since resolved the matter.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 22^nd, 2014.