Baldev Kumar fails to take oath again

Few lawmakers turned up after which the session had to be adjourned owing to incomplete quorum

PESHAWAR: Despite repeated directives from the Peshawar High Court to administer the oath to MPA-elect Baldev Kumar, the provincial assembly Monday once again failed to do so.

Kumar was brought to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly from his prison cell. Clad in chains, he disembarked from the armoured van he had been transported in.

He, however, was not immediately taken to the main hall of the assembly. Fearing that the house would erupt in protest like the last time he had been taken to the assembly, Kumar was taken to a room.

Curiously, while Kumar had been brought to the assembly on the orders of the Speaker Asad Qaiser, the latter did not attend Monday’s session to greet Kumar.

Monday’s session was scheduled to start at 3pm. Proceedings, though, kicked off eight minutes later than scheduled. After a customary recital of verses from the Holy Quran, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmaker Mehmood Jan — the panel of chairman for the current session and presiding over Monday’s sitting since Qaiser was not present and the assembly does not have a deputy speaker ever since the previous incumbent was elected to the Senate on March 12—opened the session.



He summoned Kumar from the room he had been waiting in and tried to conduct the oath-taking ceremony.

However, PTI lawmaker Fazle Ilahi pointed out there were just nine lawmakers present in the house and that the quorum was incomplete.

At this, Jan was forced to halt proceedings, just six minutes after they began, and then prorogue the sitting for an indefinite period.

Kumar is particularly unpopular among lawmakers, especially from his own party, the PTI.

The MPA-elect is accused of orchestrating the murder of the incumbent of the very seat he is trying to take the oath for, PTI MPA Sardar Suran Singh on April 22, 2016.

Kumar was subsequently arrested and is currently standing trial for the murder. The fact that he is accused of killing a sitting MPA, an adviser to the chief minister on minority affairs and generally well-liked in the assembly, has turned lawmakers — including those from his own party — against him.

Such is the animosity towards Kumar that the assembly felt comfortable in forgetting about him as long as he stayed in his jail cell.

Kumar, though, forced the assembly to summon him after filing a petition in the PHC, demanding that he should be administered the oath since he had been notified as the returned candidate by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).



Under court orders, Qaiser was compelled to summon Kumar to administer his oath on February 27.

However, this did not go down well with other lawmakers who made their opposition clear.

In a sign of protest, lawmakers had boycotted that sitting of the K-P Assembly in a bid to break the quorum and to force the speaker to adjourn the sitting and halt Kumar’s oath-taking.

Things turned ugly when PTI lawmaker Arbab Jahandad hurled a shoe at Kumar while other lawmakers hurled abuses at him.

This had angered the court which then summoned the speaker to explain why its orders were not carried out.

Qaiser subsequently appeared before the bench and explained that he was ready to administer the oath to Kumar, but members of the provincial legislature were not allowing him to do so. He went on to add that he feared a law and order situation might arise if he went ahead with the oath-taking.

This explanation was preceded by another summon for Kumar to the provincial legislature, which he missed since he was in court explaining how his fellow lawmakers had mistreated him.

On Monday, in what was the third attempt to administer the oath to Kumar after the PHC had earlier in the month directed Qaiser to “immediately” administer the oath of office to the minority member, the session was adjourned without addressing any of the items present on the day’s agenda.

The items included on the day’s agenda included a draft bill to amend the K-P local government act, transport department employees regularisation bill and amendment in the law officers’ appointment act.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 17^th, 2018.