Balochistan Assembly endorses amendment

According to the amendment all madrassas shall refrain from operating without getting themselves registered.

QUETTA: The Balochistan Assembly unanimously adopted the Societies Registration (Balochistan Amendment) Act, 2010, according to which all madrassas (religious institutions) shall refrain from operating without getting themselves registered.

The session met under the chairmanship of Speaker Aslam Bhootani on Friday. PPP information minister, Younus Mullahzai, tabled the bill before the Balochistan Assembly for approval.

An amendment was made in Section 21 of the Act which said that all madrassas, called by whatsoever name, shall not operate without getting themselves registered under the above captioned law.

Those madrassas existing before the commencement of the Societies Registration (Balochistan Amendment) Ordinance 2007 and are unregistered, they shall get themselves registered under this Act, and those madrassas which were established after the commencement of the Societies Registration (Balochistan Amendment) Ordinance, 2007, shall get themselves registered within a period of one year since their establishment.

As per the amendment:

1) A madrassa with more than one campus shall need only one registration, however, details and places regarding where they function shall have to be formed as part of the registration

2) Every madrassa shall submit an annual report of its educational activities to the registrar of societies at the end of each fiscal year

3) Every madarassa shall carry out an audit of its accounts by an authorised auditor and submit a copy of its report to the registrar along-with its annual report

4) No madrassa shall teach or publish any literature which promotes militancy or spreads sectarianism or religious hatred; provided that nothing contained herein shall bar the comparative study of various religions or schools of thought or study of any other subject covered by the Holy Quran, Sunnah or Islamic jurisprudence. In order to bring the madrassas under the regulatory framework, the federal government felt it expedient to amend “the Societies Registration Act 1860”.

Accordingly, instructions were issued to all provincial governments for making it the law through an amendment in the Societies Registration Act 1860 so the activities of the madrassas could be streamlined within a legal framework.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2010.