Sindh Assembly: Two-minute session leads to day-long debates over education minister’s comments

MQM members say they were planning to present the Hyderabad university bill on Monday.

KARACHI: In what became the shortest session of the Sindh Assembly during the current government’s tenure, the acting speaker, Shehla Raza, adjourned Monday’s proceedings in two minutes because the “quorum was incomplete.”

When the session started at 10:45am, only two members of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Anwar Mahar and Ali Nawaz Rizvi, were in attendance. “Since the quorum is not complete, it will be fruitless to initiate the proceedings,” remarked the acting speaker, Shehla Raza, while looking at the empty hall. She adjourned the session till Wednesday.

The members of Muttahida Qaumi Movement, who have been protesting against Sindh Education Minister Pir Mazharul Haq’s comments and even called for his resignation, called it a “cowardly step” on part of the government.

Earlier, a news channel had reported that at the Sindh University convocation on Saturday, Haq said that he wouldn’t allow universities to be set up in Hyderabad. Haq, however, claimed that his comments had been taken out of context.

“We all were heading from our chambers to the assembly session when the acting speaker adjourned the session. The speaker should have waited for a while for the members to turn up,” said Arif Mustafa Jatoi of the National Peoples Party.



Soon after the session was adjourned, members of the MQM who were present in their chambers - led by Faisal Subzwari and Syed Sardar Ahmed, protested outside the entrance of the assembly building. They chanted slogans in favour of the university in Hyderabad and against the division of Sindh, calling the revival of the Sindh local government ordinance 1979 (Bill 2013) a “black law”.

‘A pre-planned act’

Subzwari told the media that they were supposed to present the university bill in the session, but the acting speaker had violated parliamentary practice. “We were waiting in our chambers for the assembly bell which is rung to summon lawmakers, but the acting speaker did not allow it and suddenly adjourned the session,” he alleged.



“This is all a pre-planned game by the ruling PPP which wants to deprive the people of Hyderabad of education,” he said, adding that all the members of his party were present in their chambers. “We regret the statement by the education minister who has refused to build a university in Hyderabad. The university does not serve any other purpose or person apart from promoting education in the province.”

Subzwari added that he had taken the matter up with President Asif Ali Zardari and moved the bill in assembly. “But the PPP always makes lame excuses to delay it from getting passed - such as the bill being misplaced by the assembly secretariat.”

When asked about MQM’s future, Subzwari said that Haq and three other PPP ministers had contacted the party clarifying the minister’s statement. “Our demand is that the Hyderabad University bill be adopted in the Sindh Assembly - otherwise we will continue our protest.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2013.